About the book: 1961 / Shots rang out in a bookstore in broad daylight: as a result, three people were killed, one was dying. Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling arrive on the scene. Watching with pain the spectacle that opened before his eyes, Kling discovers that this pain becomes deeply personal, because among the dead is his fiancée Claire. The meaning of the word “beater”, which the dying man repeated, reaches Carella thanks to chance. Otherwise the crime could remain unsolved.