Sins of the Flesh

It's August 1969 in the sleepy college town of Holloman, Connecticut, and police Captain Carmine Delmonico is away on vacation. Back at home, first one, then two anonymous male corpses turn up-emaciated and emasculated. After connecting the victims to four other bodies, Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg realize that Holloman has a psychopathic killer on the loose. Luckily, Carmine decides to come back from vacation early.
Carmine's team begins to circle a trio of eccentrics, who readily admit to knowing all the victims, but their stories keep changing. They share family ties, painful memories, and a dark past. One of them is a new friend of Carmine's invaluable sergeant, Delia Carstairs, as is the respected head of the mental hospital, who has been doing groundbreaking work rehabilitating one very difficult patient who is now her trusted assistant. When another vicious murder rocks Holloman, Carmine faces the revelation that two killers are at large with completely different modus operandi even as he barely escapes being next in the body count. Suddenly the summer isn't so sleepy anymore.
A riveting mystery series by an author of astounding range and skill, Colleen McCullough's Carmine Delmonico books take you back to an age of classic police work, before DNA analysis and computers. SINS OF THE FLESH is her finest work yet, pitting her beloved hero against every cop's nightmare scenario in a plot that turns on the sort of science that McCullough herself knows so well.