Young film-maker Rune, becomes obsessed with the murder of one of the customers at her video shop, who has been renting the same noir film over and over again. She is convinced that the secrets of his brutal death are hidden within the film, but her interest brings her too close to the killer

From Publishers Weekly When a porno movie theater is blown up in Times Square, 21-year-old film production assistant Rune (no last name given) decides that this is the chance to realize her dream of making her own film. Using the bombing as a hook for a documentary on pornography, she interviews Shelly Lowe, a major porn star. Rune is just getting into the film when another explosion kills Shelly. Evidence points to a religious cult, but Rune teams up with a quirky bomb squad detective, Sam Healy, to discover the real murderer. Since Rune's method of operation is unorthodox (including breaking into offices and buying false IDs), Sam extricates her from some bizarre predicaments and then becomes her lover. Rune's pursuit of the killer takes her behind the scenes of legitimate theater and into the seamy world of pornography. She is an offbeat heroine with a mixture of spunk and naivete. Deaver (Manhattan Is My Beat) writes compellingly about New York 's sordid side, but his portrayal of Shelly as a gifted actress and aspiring playwright is hard to credit. Still, his fast-paced whodunit is saved by surprising twists near the end

From Publishers Weekly Rune, the shrewd and spunky heroine of Manhattan Is My Beat, returns with a new job as a camerawoman for a local TV news station, but she still believes in magic and lives by her own rules. Rune thinks that Randy Boggs, convicted killer of network news head Lance Hopper, is innocent, and she persuades network dragon lady Piper Sutton, the country's top news anchor, to let her investigate and produce a segment on the murder. Endearing, with lots of moxie but no experience, Rune learns the hard way as she blunders through the world of big-time investigative reporting, making mistakes and trusting the wrong people. She also has to act as a mother to her flaky friend Claire's three-year-old, Ophelia, when Claire runs off to Boston in search of a better life. Deaver's background as a journalist helps him to vivify the competitive, even back-stabbing caste system of network news and to successfully depict the tedium as well as the excitement a reporter experiences when breaking a major story. He writes with clarity, compassion and intelligence, and with a decidedly human and contemporary slant. *** This is the final installment in Jeffery Deaver's "Rune" trilogy. Rune seems to have finally made the first step towards her dreams. She has secured a job working for a major news department. However, she becomes fascinated with the brutal murder of the network boss and then trouble starts