The Night Falconer

"These events, it was said, were often precipitated by the distant screaming of a hawk or the hooting of an owl." An odd situation turns deadly serious for private investigator and falconer Frank Pavlicek when a prominent resident of a renovated Manhattan apartment building accuses the building's eccentric developer, with whom she and other apartment owners are embroiled in a lawsuit, of hiring someone with a bird of prey to hunt down their pets. The pets are definitely missing. The accuser claims to have found incriminating evidence while witnesses have spotted a specter-like figure prowling Central Park at night carrying a giant owl. Returning to some of his former NYPD haunts to investigate with the help of his daughter and partner Nicole, sidekick Jake Toronto, and tough-nosed New York PI Darla Barnes, Frank soon discovers more is at stake than any of them imagine. Chasing what appears to be a mysterious falconer, they stumble upon an anonymous, half-dead child. "Fast-paced, twisty, and complex." -- BOOKLIST