A Face In The Crowd- Lynda La Plante

The victim was young. Female. And black. Her  skull had been smashed in, her face decomposed  beyond all recognition. But for Detective Chief  Inspector Jane Tennison, the corpse that had just been  found in one of London's poorest communities was  only the beginning of a case that would tear apart  an already divided city . . .and embroil the  gritty cop and her force in a hotbed of racial strife,  shocking accusations, and sudden, wrenching  violence.

But Jane Tennison was not a  woman who let anything get in the way of her  passion for justice. Not the racism of some of the boys  in the station house, or the slippery politicking  of her superiors. Not even when her own stormy  love life explodes in sleazy tabloid headlines.  Because a brutal and seductive killer was still at  large, luring innocent girls from London's midnight  streets. And because for Jane Tennison, stalking  her prime suspect has become an obsession -- one  that could send her spiraling over the edge . . .