Alafair Burke has a literary winner in Detective Ellie Hatcher, the new fictional hero she introduces in her fourth novel, "Dead Connection." Hatcher is a NYPD beat cop who has recently made detective in the tough, gritty, urban environment of New York City. 

She is the successor to Samantha Kincaid, the star of Burke's three previous novels, who apparently has been retired after the author moved to New York City to teach criminal law at Hofstra University. It seems that Kincaid stayed behind in the author's former home town of Portland, Oregon, since most authors site their detective stories in their home area. This makes it much easier to add the local flavor and color that gives every story its needed dash of verisimilitude, and it also helps when it comes to checking out locations which are important to the story line. 

Burke excels at characterizations from heroes to villains, and Ellie Hatcher is a perfect example of her finely crafted personalities, all of whom draw the reader into the orbit of a complex but well-thought out plot. There is a casualness and a contemporary appeal to her stories that belie their  sophisticated construction. 

Hatcher is a 30-something blond of medium height who is described as somewhere between eye-catching and stunning, but, like a lot of women, she sees herself differently. She sees herself as a normal person who seems to have more than her fair share of men problems including a ne'er do well brother who crashes at her apartment in between his few paying gigs as a musician and a bartender. Her few romantic entanglements are quickly truncated when the men find out that she is a cop and she carries a gun. 

Her professional relationships aren't any better. Ellie's problem is that she is working in one of the most male-dominated careers that there are, so her being attractive is certain to raise eyebrows. She can cope with the fact that much of this unwanted attention may be for eye-candy reasons, but she also senses the darker tinges of male chauvinism. 

It seems that Hatcher is destined for the NYPD Homicide Department, for she is a star in the making. What she lacks in stature, she makes up for in smarts, dogged perseverance, an open mind, and her feminine intuition. She has already achieved favorable publicity for busting open an earlier case, but this notice has not come without cost. Many of her older male counterparts view her as a prima donna who has yet to pay her dues after having made detective just 13 months earlier. 

In spite of the departmental jealousy and rivalries, the favorable press was bound to attract more serious attention, and, sure enough, this story has hardly begun when Ellie receives a request for a "temporary transfer" to the elite NYPD homicide department. The transfer will be granted, but bruised feelings and hurt egos, mostly male, will remain behind in her old office as well as accompany her to the new one.

Ellie's immediate superior, Lieutenant Jenkins, was the one who had received that call from homicide requesting her temporary assignment. Jenkins is already jealous of her making detective in just four years, jealous of the press that she has received for a case, and now he is jealous of her new assignment. The officers over in Homicide won't like it either now that someone in their midst has snubbed them and pulled rank to get an outside cop assigned to their elite precinct. 

Ellie hears rumors of an ongoing investigation involving two dead woman, and she wonders if she is being assigned because she will be asked to play a date bait decoy in sequin tops for one of the detectives. The thought that this is the reason for the transfer does not please her. 

She needn't have worried. It turns out that a famous homicide detective by the name of Flan McIlroy has requested Ellie's help. McIlroy is one of those detectives who operates outside the box and off the NYPD political reservation, so much so that his nickname is McIl-Mulder from the television series, "The X Files." His fellow officers view him with suspicion, but the fact that he is successful allows him a certain degree of latitude and the political protection to pick his cases. McIlroy loves to tackle current cases that bear a disturbing resemblance to the modis operandi of the cold cases that he has seen in the past. 

One young girl has been murdered after an internet date. Nothing too curious about that, except for the fact that McIlroy is the only one who notices that she was murdered one year to the day after another girl was murdered. Now, that is a coincidence, and McIlroy thrives on coincidences. There are others. Both girls were walking home after an internet date, both girls were attractive, both were Manhattanites, and both were approximately the same age. The only difference is that one was shot while the other was strangled.

Both girls had arranged to meet their dates at "meat market" bars after arranging everything through a popular internet web site known as "FirstDate.com." The new victim even has a copy of the meeting e-mail stuffed into her coat pocket. Unfortunately, breaking into the chat room will not be easy, since FirstDate.com is set up to be totally anonymous and completely private, which is just the way its clients like it. But its appeal for anonymity also makes this forum the perfect hiding place for a sexual predator or a spurned lover out to extract revenge. 2007, Henry Holt and Company.