A scorching masterwork of love, lust, and murder, "The Seventh Commandment" is the provocative bestseller by Lawrence Sanders, author of "The First Deadly Sin" and "Mcnally's Puzzle." A fabulously wealthy jeweler is stabbed in the streets of New York. Insurance investigator Dora Conti must decide whether or not to honor the family's claim. But the Starrett family empire is ripe with scandal: corruption, addiction, adultery. And the search for the deadly truth takes a startling and passionate turn when Dora herself falls unto temptation...
So what is the seventh commandment? Unless you are Catholic or Lutheran, the seventh commandment is "You shall not commit adultery." If you are Catholic or Lutheran, it’s "You shall not steal", which also works in this storyline. But mainly, the title is referring to adultery. Woven in to all of this adultery (or possible adultery) is a caper involving a jewelry empire and the trading of gold. And greed, and drugs, and a little bit of conning, too. I liked the mystery part of the book, but the adultery stuff rubbed me the wrong way. I actually would have liked to see Dora and police detective John get together, but not when she is supposedly "happily married". If the author wanted her to seriously consider cheating on her husband, he should have at least made the husband some sort of scumbag. I think I would have been happy with the adultery being limited to the other players in the story and leave our main character out of it.
