Exceptional Clearance — William J. Caunitz

A deserted street off Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue... a park on Manhattan's posh Upper East Side... a dressing room in a crowded Fifty-seventh Street boutique. Three young women are found murdered, victims of a serial killer, the only apparent link between them the bizarre and brutal nature of their deaths.
Heading up the investigations is NYPD Detective Lieutenant John Vinda, a man who believes that exceptional circumstances require exceptional actions: He is willing to bend the law to break the case and bring down the psychopath roaming the city streets. But the ruthless woman-stalker is as elusive as he is brazen, killing with religious fervor and taunting his pursuers in the process. Vinda's investigation - and his career - hang by a single shocking thread tying the victim's together... a thread that had become a slow-burning fuse aimed straight at the heart of police headquarters.