Into the Same River Twice — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

It is before dawn on a Sunday morning. Loren Mensing, visiting profession at New York University School of Law, is awakened by a phone call from a woman who had vanished from his life almost a quarter century ago. Now she is in danger for her life and begs for his help.

Loren joins ambiguous forces with an NYPD police officer and their journey leads to a brutal murder in Greenwich Village, to the waterfront of St. Louis, to a hospital for the criminally insane, and finally back to NYU and an honors ceremony with U.S. Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun as guest speaker.

In the meantime, private eye, Val Tremain, risks disfigurement and death to save Loren, whom she has loved since 1978 (Nevin's Corrupt and Ensnare), even though she knows he may leave her for the woman who has obsessed him for more than twenty years.

As cerebral as any puzzle from detective fiction and as dark as any film noir, Into the Same River Twice is Nevin's most outstanding work to date.