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SECOND WATCH
by Lowen Clausen
Signet, March 2003
377 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0451208196


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

There is a piece of advice often given to authors to write what they know. Lowen Clausen was once a Seattle beat cop and then a businessman in the Ballard district, and when he writes about a cop patrolling the Ballard area and interacting with the local businesspeople, he gives the narrative an air of authenticity that is both convincing and compelling. Reading Second Watch I could see the locations as clearly as if I was walking the beat with Katherine Murphy, hear the sounds, delight in the smells of the Norwegian grocery store, and laugh and cry with the local inhabitants. The re-creation of the community of Ballard is as vivid as I can recall in any crime fiction.

Katherine Murphy, a police officer who first appeared in First Avenue, takes the leading role in Clausen's second book. Second Watch is set several decades ago when women were still a rarity on the beat, so when Murphy joins Grace Stevens as partners the combination of two female officers is bound to raise a few eyebrows. The new partners aren't allowed much time to settle in, however, as they are called to two seperate murder scenes with some obvious similarities.

The crimes in Second Watch involve children, a subject which many, quite understandably, find difficult to deal with. Clausen's treatment is sensitive and there are no gratuitous scenes of violence, the focus remains mostly on the people who genuinely care and their reactions. The result is often heart warming which creates a stark contrast to the scenes involving the villains.

Clausen keeps his cast of characters quite small, a technique which I enjoyed as it allowed for good development of all of them, and a feel of a village community within the big city. There's not a lot of mystery as to who the bad guys are, but their evilness is chillingly real and as convincing as the goodness of some of the most likeable characters you'll ever meet. What makes these charactes so real for me is the wealth of small details and the little eccentricities that are rarely overdone.

The amount of detail and the occasional sidetrack result in a slower pacing for much of the book, but there are several high-tension flashes of action and the pace builds to a superb climax. There is no neatly tied package at the end of Second Watch, no false happy ever after, but Clausen introduces a very subtle theme on the cycle of violence which is both disturbing and thought provoking, and makes this a very memorable ending. There is a sense at the end of the book of the characters lives continuing on, of potential future events, an open endedness which is far more intriguing than a simple full stop.

Second Watch is fine book, a potential award winner, and a worthy successor to First Avenue. This book will certainly be in my best reads for 2003 and I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Paul Richmond, June 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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