A burst of homicide apppears on the dense, overcrowded radar screen of the New York City Police Department. Little attention is paid to these crimes - the victims are criminals, and there is no apparent pattern or motive connecting the killings. Then a number of children, most from the teeming "underclass," disappear. As missing persons they are low-priority data in the ceaseless flood of police statistics. But improbable connections burrow into the mind of Tony Gilmore, Detective First Grade, one of the last specimens of that dying professional title. A vexation to his Police Department commanders, Gilmore's intuitive lines of inquiry are the stuff of investigative legend. As the case develops, his findings draw him and each of his partners into an inescapable confrontation. Gilmore's beautiful, intuitive female partner pays a terrible price for her discoveries. A bi-coastal nightmare unfolds. The remaining three investigators find that their cases, and their lives, have changed utterly. They come to understand that nothing in their long police careers has prepared them to face the ultimate adversary. The urgency intensifies when Gilmore's only son is caught in the deadly perpetrator's web. ENDTIME POLICEMAN is not for the faint of heart