Candyland

A brilliant and powerful new novel in two parts from two extraordinary and diverse talents . . .

Benjamin Thorpe is married, a father, a successful Los Angeles architect - and a man obsessed. Alone in New York City on business, he spends the empty hours of the night in a compulsive search for female companionship. His dizzying descent leads to an early morning confrontation in a mid-town brothel, and a subsequent searing self-revelation.

Cathy Frese - aka Heidi the "teenage" hooker - finishes up for the night and walks back to her studio apartment. But she never arrives. Her strangled, used and mutilated body is found in an alleyway the next morning.

These two lost souls had crossed briefly in their night, and as the foggy events of the night before come into sharper focus, Benjamin Thorpe becomes an ever more possible suspect . . .

Alone, Ed McBain and Evan Hunter have over the years forged two separate and distinct careers - despite being one and the same person. "Together" for the first time, they have written a novel that is at once shocking, bold and compulsively readable.