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Not every writer who writes police procedurals is well-acquainted with the procedures of a police department. Robin Burcell, a police officer since 1983, can and does write authoritatively about how the San Francisco police go about their business, so this suspenseful murder mystery is the real, albeit fictional, thing. It shows in every chapter that this much-experienced police officer knows her business. She also knows how to write mysteries with fast-moving plots, plenty of action, believable characters, and the wonderful setting of San Francisco (where I once had an office in the Old Mint Building on 5th Street off Market). I also especially like her command of the English language, correct usage, always appropriate to the story, tough when need be, but never overdone. So, too, her use of sex, tantalizing while avoiding clinical descriptions. In short, this story lacks nothing. Police Inspector Kate Gillespie investigates a murder with her partner, Sam Scolari. But then Sam's wife, who was about to divorce him, is found murdered, too, and there are other murders as well, and Scolari disappears. Kate is now at risk, and so an Internal Affairs lieutenant, Mike Torrance, is assigned to protect her around the clock, even if this means sleeping with her, in the pure sense of sawing wood, although with ample provocations. The action revolves around a generous handful of characters, including jealous fellow police officers, one particularly inimical officer, some former policemen now ambiguously in private jobs, a drug dealer and his murderous assistant, and owners of a pharmaceutical company. A few mysterious common weed seeds provide a puzzling clue. The closer Kate gets to the heart of the case, the more perilous becomes her life, and there's an attempt to kill her even when Torrance is right next to her. Kate believes in the innocence of her missing partner, Scolari, in spite of the conviction of senior police officers that he is the guilty party, and thus Kate's persistence is not making any brownie points for her career. Through all of this exciting plot, we see the police behind the scenes at work, the homicide detectives, the Crime Scene Investigators, the autopsy doctors and technicians, the evidence maintenance people, the records keepers, the internal affairs officers who investigate their fellow police officers if the facts require it, and the brass who have one foot in police affairs and one in local politics. We see the jealousies, the pecking order, sometimes the sloppiness, the covering up, the good intentions gone bad, the tricks (such as when there's no other excuse to bring a man in for questioning, check his record thoroughly and arrest him for failing to pay a traffic ticket), and the painstaking, plodding work by truly dedicated officers that goes into successfully solving a crime. I enjoyed this procedural more than some of those (mentioning no names) that are considered the best in the market, even some by writers who also have an abundance of police experience. The story seems fresh and original. It not only vibrates with authenticity, but also leaps with continuous excitement, one of what I call fast reads. Burcell has earned her stripes, or bars, or stars, or whatever is appropriate, as a mystery writer as well as a real-life police officer.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, March 2004
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