The Investigation Hardcover – August 22, 1977 by Dorothy Uhnak
 
The Investigation is a novel so powerful and disturbing, yet so believable, that it is impossible to put down until the very last page. Kitty Keeler is beautiful, blond-and anything but the conventional middle-class mother of her neighborhood. Estranged from her kind and loving husband, George, she hoards expensive clothes and leads a social life that involves close friendships with men who move in the world of cocktail lounges, gambling casinos and motels where politics and organized crime meet. When Kitty's small sons are found dead, the police, the public and the District Attorney quickly conclude that Kitty herself has murdered them. The media make her an overnight celebrity; her private life becomes a public scandal. During the course of the investigation, one cop-Sergeant Joe Peters, a world-wise detective, reluctantly approaching retirement and the end of a faltering marriage-gradually begins to doubt the weight of evidence and prejudice against Kitty. Not only does he believe that Kitty may be innocent, but he finds himself growing to love her. With the same determined thoroughness with which he has uncovered the evidence in many other crimes, Joe sets out to prove Kitty's innocence. His search for the one key missing fact draws him into the whole tangled web of lives and careers that have been entwined with Kitty's: those of a rising politician whose bid for the mayoralty of New York is suddenly crushed when his name is linked to hers; a sleek criminal underlord whose friendship with Kitty exposes him to an unexpected and dangerous piece of blackmail; a dying Mafia don who knows more about the case, and about Kitty, than anyone else; an ambitious police captain who sees in Kitty's conviction the chance to become Police Commissioner of the City of New York... .
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