This is the fourth and final entry in William Bayer's series featuring NYPD homicide detective Frank Janek. As in the other three, this book features an antagonist with deep psychological issues and in order to solve the case, Janek will have to prove himself a brilliant analyst. Janek is a detective who relies on the excellent team of detectives he leads. He also utilizes science and the normal routine of a police homicide investigation, but principally he relies on his brain as he attempts to sort through the evidence of a case and get into the mind of the perpetrator.

This case may be his toughest challenge yet. A profoundly damaged young woman named Gelsey lives above a very elaborate mirror maze that her now-dead father constructed when she was a young girl. We learn early on that on occasion her father took Gelsey down into the maze and abused her. Now on rainy nights, she visits the maze and then drives from her home in New Jersey into Manhattan. There she goes into a bar and tricks a target who appears well-to-do into asking her up to his room or to his home. Once there, she drugs the man and then robs him. Before leaving, she always writes a mirror-imaged message on the guy's chest, insulting him in some way. This will be the first thing he sees when he wakes.

Now, though, one of her targets has been found shot to death and robbed of something extremely valuable. Janek and his team are assigned the case. Hotel employees describe Gelsey say that she left the bar with the victim. Thus she becomes the prime suspect. Janek realizes almost immediately, though, that there's a lot more to this case than meets the eye, and the whole situation will very rapidly become decidedly more complex and a lot more violent.

Meanwhile, Janek will also be assigned to reopen a murder case, known simply as "Mendoza," which has haunted the department and damaged careers for nine years. Mendoza, a very wealthy "player," was convicted of having his wife murdered in a spectacular fashion and is now in prison. The case also involved the assassination of a police detective in a car bombing and there have long been accusations that, in their determination to bring down a cop killer, the detective investigating the case manufactured evidence against Mendoza to ensure his conviction. A new lead in the case now appears, though, and as he attempts to unravel the case, Janek will find himself in mortal danger and aggravating a lot of his fellow cops along the way.

The two investigations are very compelling and thus the book moves along at a brisk pace. Janek continues to be a very appealing protagonist and it's too bad that Bayer decided to end the series this quickly. This book was published in 1994, and like the others, may be a bit hard to find. But for readers who enjoy complex psychological crime novels, the series is definitely worth seeking out.