Agnes Among the Gargoyles

"Set in the freewheeling 1980s, Agnes Among the Gargoyles commences at the dedication of an office tower constructed atop Grand Central Station. The building, the work of billionaire real estate baron Ronald Wegeman, sticks out of the venerable Beaux-Arts railroad terminal ""like a thirty-story middle finger."" When a plan to assassinate Wegeman goes awry, Agnes Travertine finds herself hailed as a hero and drawn into the Great Man's circle. Meanwhile, Agnes's friend Barbara Foucault becomes the first victim of the Minotaur of the Labyrinth, New York City's latest serial killer. Stewardesses, nightclub singers, nurses, rabbi's wives--no one is safe from his blood lust. Agnes wonders: is it disrespectful to Barbara's memory to fall in love with the detective assigned to the case? Wegeman opens The Palace of Versailles, his showplace casino in Coney Island, but the applause is not as tumultuous as he expects. His daughter Sarah, freshly expelled from prep school for having a social conscience, yearns to help society. She attaches herself to Agnes, and films a documentary about Wayne Torrence, a homeless gay man with AIDS in search of Eastern enlightenment, all the while battling off