By Blood Alone

Manhattan, 1979. Russell Dorne, a Private Eye in his mid-fifties, is hired by notoriously publicity shy millionaire Jason Everett Garson to find out who murdered his drug-partying pimp of a son. They weren't close, but you can understand Mr. Moneybags' sense of outrage as Garson jnr.'s corpse wasn't the stuff of open-casket funerals - he'd been decapitated and drained of blood.

Dorne visits his old buddy, Deputy Police Commissioner Carl Mariani who's currently being driven to distraction by the antics of "another Jack the Ripper" preying on not only prostitutes but pimps, druggies, derelicts and sundry street people, the more transient the better. Garson's killer could well be the same man, but why should the butcher suddenly opt for so high profile a victim?

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn's Wildwood Cemetery, the black clad skeleton of a man who died 150 years ago is discovered up and out of it's vault. The clothing is relatively recent, and his wallet contains over $100 and the card of noted psychiatrist, Dr. Edgar Wallman. Dorne consults Dr. Mike Leonard, a young pathologist, who tells him a blood-soaked handkerchief found in the jacket pocket bore substantial traces of LSD while the rare blood type is identical to that of Garson. What is going on? and what is the relevance of that extra coffin in the Gorse mausoleum?