The Palindrome Plot

Roberto Trebor, having murdered his abusive parents, has been jailed for eleven years in state prisons. Now twenty-three, the paroled inmate works as a reclusive custodian in the New York Public Library…where he lives in a basement room. A spate of eleven midtown Manhattan killings torments homicide detective Steve "Rosie" Rosenberg because all the corpses are discovered bearing seemingly senseless messages…and Rosie's boss receives a copy of each victim's note in the next day's mail. Unexpectedly, a dyslexic postal clerk at Police Plaza spots something that has eluded everyone else on the case—all of the dead have reversible given names: Hannah, Bob, Ava, Otto—furthermore, all the taunting notes are themselves palindromes: "Dammit, I'm mad!" … "Don't nod" … "So many dynamos." This cannot be mere coincidence. Rosie and his assistant, Edna Murphy, devise an elaborate plan to flush out the clever killer…but their "palindrome plot" backfires badly.