Downfall

Set in early 1980s New York City, this thriller by Rubinstein (“Mad Dog” trilogy; The Lovers’ Tango) capitalizes on collective memory of the gritty city portrayed each evening in the news, thoroughly grounding readers in time and place. Rick Shepherd is a physician who comes upon an active crime scene at the door to his Manhattan office. While watching the evening news, he learns the identity of the victim, a man he does not know but is his doppelgänger. What seems an unsettling coincidence becomes much more when Rick’s father, also a physician, is murdered two nights later in Brooklyn in the same manner as Rick’s doppelgänger. Is this the work of a serial killer, or is Rick somehow a target? Menacing phone calls to his house point to a personal vendetta against him. Newly paired detectives Nager and Callaghan catch the case, complicated by the cross-borough connection. Working in parallel, Rick and the detectives attempt to find links between the victims and to Rick himself, while the new partners come to their own realization.