NYPD Detective Frank Janek Confronts a Most Unusual Case

First published in 1984, this is the second novel by William Bayer to feature NYPD homicide detective Frank Janek. As the book opens, Janek gets some very bad news; his “rabbi” in the department, a retired detective named Al DiMona has committed suicide. DiMona’s widow believes that her husband was tracking down an old case and can’t imagine why he would have taken his own life in the middle of it.

Janek promises to look into the situation and try to figure out what case DiMona might have resurrected. But before he can even begin to do so, as he is leaving DiMona’s funeral, the chief of detectives assigns him to a new and very bizarre murder case. A hooker and an apparently prim and proper female schoolteacher have both been knifed to death in their respective apartments within a few hours of each other. The killer then decapitated the two victims and switched their heads, doing so in such an artful manner that at first the people discovering the bodies don’t even realize that the heads have been switched.

Janek leads the team of detectives investigating the killings, but there are very few clues and the solution to the case will depend upon Frank Janek’s ability to get into the mind of a very clever and demented killer. At the same time he discovers and begins to pursue the case that Al DiMona had been following at the time of his death, and both investigations may put Janaek and the people he cares about in very grave danger.

This is an excellent police procedural from a time before cell phones and computers and when the technology of crime scene investigation was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today. Janek is a very appealing protagonist, and this book inspired a series of made-for-TV movies starring Richard Crenna as Janek. The book may be a bit hard to find at this late date, but it’s certainly worth looking for.