Tailor's Dummy

This entirely winning first novel centers on Leonard Schwartz, once a '60s Harvard activist, now a slightly disillusioned but uncorrupted homicide detective for the NYPD. When a notorious art dealer is bizarrely murderedhis body is discovered in the lap of the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central ParkSchwartz finds a willing investigative partner in his lovely, vivacious wife, Karen, an art historian for the Metropolitan Museum. From the sinister world of gay life's ""rough trade'' to the upper echelons of New York's cultured society, Schwartz closes in on his suspect, while Karen slowly ralizes she is being stalked by John Sheridan, an old beau who is sexually irresistible (and possibly dangerous), and who may know more than he lets on about the case. The pacing is brisk, the humor puckish, and the writing sophisticated. February