Guilty Parties

At the apex of the New York art world, murder is the newest fad. Harry and Sally, Belinda and Jack - two couples, four best friends. Inseparable since college, they stay close through their twenties and thirties, as they make their way to the top of the New York arts scene. Harry is a playwright, Jack a novelist, Belinda a painter, and Sally, well, Sally has always been happy just to be Harry's wife. But as Harry and Belinda's careers take off, Jack's stalls. Unable to complete a second novel, his attitude becomes poisonous, even violent, until Belinda is forced to throw him out of their beautiful loft apartment. Single again for the first time in decades, she finds that in a city full of wolves, her husband may have the sharpest teeth. As summer heat chokes New York, its most chic addresses are about to be drenched in the bluest blood the city has to offer. Review Quote: "One of the most robust and intelligent thriller writers of the past two decades." - Publishers Weekly Biographical note: Thomas Gifford (1937-2000) was a bestselling author of thriller novels. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, he moved to Minnesota after graduating from Harvard. After eight years as a traveling textbook salesman, he wrote Benchwarmer Bob (1974), a biography of Minnesota Vikings defensive end Bob Lurtsema. The Wind Chill Factor (1975), a novel about dark dealings among ex-Nazis, introduced John Cooper, a character Gifford would revisit in The First Sacrifice (1994). The Wind Chill Factor was one of several books Gifford set in and around Minneapolis. Gifford won an Edgar Award nomination for The Cavanaugh Quest (1976). The Glendower Legacy (1978), a story about an academic who discovers that George Washington may have been a British spy, was adapted for the film Dirty Tricks (1981), starring Elliott Gould. In the 1980s Gifford wrote suspense novels under the pen names Thomas Maxwell and Dana Clarins. In 1996 he moved back to Dubuque to renovate his childhood home. He died of cancer in 2000.