Recommended reading - The Anderson Tapes, by Lawrence Sanders (1970):

The Anderson Tapes

By Lawrence Sanders.

Filmed as The Anderson Tapes (1971), directed by Sidney Lumet.

Published by DELL PUBL CO.

First published 1970.

ISBN-10: 0440102170

ISBN-13: 9780440102175

Description:

With clockwork precision, Lawrence Sanders outlines the inspiration, planning and execution of an ambitious robbery of an apartment building on New York's Upper East Side in The Anderson Tapes, the best-selling thriller that established him as one of the most popular suspense writers of his generation. The premise is clever – the entire story is told in surveillance tape transcripts and reports from law enforcement agencies, each of which seems to be observing some aspect of the situation in which the robbery takes place.

John "Duke" Anderson was recently paroled from Sing Sing, after serving time on a charge of breaking and entering. A rich woman picks him up one evening and takes him back to her apartment, in a small but elegant building on the Upper East Side. Anderson is intrigued by the situation in the building, seeing it as a possible target for a large-scale robbery. He needs backing, though, and he gets it through his contacts with the underworld. What Anderson does not know is that much of what he is already doing is being captured as evidence through electronic surveillance. The catch is that the different entities doing the surveillance are not communicating with each other. The evidence is assembled and the puzzle solved, after the robbery takes place and ends violently, by NYPD Capt. Edward X. Delaney.

The Anderson Tapes marks the first appearance in a Sanders novel of Delaney, a character who will be central to the author's Deadly Sin series of thrillers. Sanders brilliantly unfolds the story in short, fact-filled chapters constructed as police reports and tape transcripts, some of which are tantalizingly garbled. The Anderson Tapes won for Sanders the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar as the Best First Mystery Novel of 1970.