The Commandment Series by Lawrence Sanders
The Commandment #1
The Sixth Commandment
Lawrence Sanders
Bestselling author Lawrence Sanders breaks new ground with a story about a doctor who plays God—with horrifying resultsBingham Foundation field investigator Samuel Todd has been assigned to approve a grant to Dr. Telford Thorndecker, the current head of Crittenden Hall, a senior care facility. Thorndecker’s wealthy first wife died in a drowning accident. The Nobel Prize–winning scientist is now married again, and his second wife is a gamine beauty four years younger than his daughter. Commanding and charismatic, Thorndecker is a man in his prime. But as Todd digs deeper into the goings-on at Crittenden Hall, he begins to question the very essence of the man. Is Thorndecker a brilliant scientist on the edge of a monumental breakthrough, or a madman who’ll stop at nothing to achieve immortality? Todd must make his own Hobson’s choice as he races to stop a conspiracy that could have calamitous consequences for years to come.
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The Commandment #2
The Tenth Commandment
Lawrence Sanders
In this installment of Lawrence Sanders’s acclaimed Commandment series, a law firm investigator goes up against a cunning adversary who uses religion for retributionJoshua Bigg, an investigator for a Manhattan law firm, usually spends his days tracking down witnesses and verifying clients’ alibis. Ironically, Bigg is quite short, and uses his boyish looks to coax information from his targets. The newly promoted agent gets the chance to show his mettle when he probes the disappearance of one client and the suspicious suicide of another. Professor Yale Stonehouse left his apartment one night, without saying anything to his wife, and never returned. Sol Kipper plunged to his death from the top floor of his Upper East Side townhouse. With little to go on, Bigg enlists the help of a cop, and uncovers a shocking connection between the two cases: a corrupt clergyman who preys on the lonely and bereaved. Desperate to stop the stone-cold killer who uses religion to mete out his own brand of justice, Bigg has to prove that no one is above God—or the law.
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The Commandment #3
The Eighth Commandment
Lawrence Sanders
When a rare coin vanishes, an appraiser tries to clear her name—and exposes one family’s lethal secretsAppraising rare coins for Grandby & Sons, a venerable Madison Avenue auction house, is a dream come true for Mary Lou Bateson. She even gets a chance to inspect the Havistock Collection of priceless coins, which includes the Demaretion, a rare, ancient Greek silver piece. But when the Demaretion disappears just after her assessment, the young numismatist becomes the number-one suspect.Placed on indefinite leave, Bateson enlists the help of a New York Police Department cop and an insurance detective to go behind the closed doors of one of New York’s most powerful and untouchable families. The Havistocks are keeping some dangerous secrets, including a kleptomaniac daughter, a sex-addicted daughter-in-law, and a sleazy nest of adultery, pornography, and damning secrets someone is willing to kill to keep.From Publishers WeeklySanders's legion of fans will be disappointed by this caper/suspense tale that is clearly a lesser effort by the bestselling novelist. Six-foot-two and every inch of her honest, Mary Lou "Dunk" Bateson is a coin appraiser at a New York auction house. She is forced to become an amateur detective when a prized Greek coin disappears from a collection that has been transferred to her company for auction. First treated as a prime suspect, Dunk determines to clear her name by ferreting out the real thief. In the process, she finds two interesting suitors in the cop and the insurance investigator who are assigned to the case, as well as encountering the bizarre family of Archibald Havistock, owner of the purloined coin. As she meets the Havistock household, Dunk uncovers scandal and perversity in the family closet, providing her with plenty of suspects. More lighthearted than Sanders's lurid crime novels, this is nonetheless far from a compelling spellbinder. Literary Guild selection; first serial to Cosmopolitan. (June 5pLYING IN STATECopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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