Shoot a Sitting Duck

A usual Yuletide eve in New York turns out to be a very strange one for three people when a messenger interrupts their celebration to deliver a Christmas card with a startling message: Maddox Slade's wife has been kidnapped. What's stranger still is that one of the three people who receives the note is none other than Maddox Slade's wife, Arlene! Christmas eve ends with the discovery of a murdered man in the shooting gallery over which Bart Hardin, managing editor of the Broadway Times, lives. The trail--and a beery Santa Claus--lead to Greenwich Village and another murder. A suspect himself, Hardin finds himself in a delicate position between his employer and his old friend, Lieutenant Romano of Homicide. Packed with Broadway characters, action and detection, this is the best Bart Hardin story yet.