Christmas is coming. But erudite attorney Gerry Fletcher got his present early: his wife s body with a knife buried in it. Though he shamelessly cops to being happy she s dead, his alibi is airtight and all signs point to a burglary gone bad. But even when detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling follow the clues to a junky punk and get a full confession, Carella can t quit thinking there s something about the case that s as phony as a sidewalk Santa s beard. Maybe it s because the victim s husband wants to pal around with the suspicious cop on a cryptic pub-crawl through the urban jungle. Or maybe it s the dead woman s double identity and little black book full of secret lovers. Whether she was Sarah the shrewish wife or Sadie the sex-crazy swinger, there s more to her murder than just a bad case of wrong place, wrong time. And Carella won t rest till his cuffs are on the killer.