The Prosecutor

Recovering alcoholic Irmgard Werner is trying to put her life back together when she is stabbed to death in her welfare-hotel apartment. District Attorney Onofrio Racanelli, who had become friends with Werner after she agreed to testify against a major slumlord, wants to nail her killer. The dead woman's social worker becomes the key when it is revealed that he has been lying about his final contact with her. Elsewhere in the Bronx, cops Frank Piccolo and Howie Stein, who are lovers as well as partners, pk puzzle out the death of their informer friend, August ``the Ferret'' Rondolpho, who has been found grotesquely bloated in the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia after the cover is blown on a Mafia car-theft ring. They carry out a series of cunningpk attacks on his suspected murderer, Philadelphia mafioso Angelo Capezzi, including filling Capezzi's office with sewage from a hose dropped through a hole in the roof. Philbin ( Death Sentence ) demonstrates his skill for storytelling and for creating characters who, if not always likable, are distinctive and credible--from a D.A. who lives with his mom to a pair of unorthodox cops. (Mar.)