It's Black at his best, police procedure with some technological extrapolation that makes ...
595333
Michael A. Black delivers another suspenseful tale that is riveting. It'll keep you guessing and churning through the pages to the find out the answer. It's Black at his best, police procedure with some technological extrapolation that makes it a little bit Sci-Fi. All in all, a great read that I highly recommend. Don't miss this clever, entertaining book. Black is a consummate storyteller of the first order.
497536
This is how its done. A murder of a cop occurs near a homeless/vagrant camp. It is winter in Eugene, Oregon, and the cop is on a mission of mercy to hand out warm clothes and blankets. In the next fifteen pages we meet the principal players, understand the scene and a few oddities, and begin to see the complicated lives of several of the principals. The pace is already just short of relentless. And a teenaged girl is attacked in a texted video.
It is clear you are in the hands of an experienced, talented writer with a real sense of how to use foreshadowing, properly set the stage, and embed in readers minds important characteristics through judicious use of language in dialogue, and in the underlying narrative.
When a policeman is discovered murdered near a homeless camp, officers react with a wide spectrum of expected responses from rage at the homeless, guilty or innocent, and sincere attempts to discover the killer. Meanwhile a detective related to the dead man would rather be on that unit, but hes assigned to track someone who is preying on young girls, sexually assaulting them on video and blackmailing the girls parents.
Each of the principals in the novel also has personal and relationship circumstances that provide stress and happiness at various times. It all makes for a rich stew with many ingredients that have to be carefully balanced. Sellars skillfully guides the reader through the sometimes gritty and often difficult times experienced by her characters. When the results of careful deductive reasoning and persistent investigation finally begin to resolve into profiles the detectives can grasp and move to conclusion, there are a few times when things seem just a bit rushed.
The novel is extremely well written has a fine sense of its special location and the characters are all well-defined. This is a mystery detective novel that should satisfy every reader.
Recommended.
2528808
There are a few things you can depend on in Chester Himes's great police procedurals featuring Coffin  Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones : colorful characters, distinctive dialect, a fierce racial sensibility,  and plenty of mayhem.  Meanwhile, the stories are pleasantly devoid of the kind of self-analysis and  interior monologue which clutter up so much of modern fiction, even crime fiction.  The Heat's On is  something of an exception.  Oh, there's more than enough mayhem and what with a giant albino  junkie, a hunchback dwarf, a pony-sized attack dog, a faith healer, and various and sundry other folk  about, there's certainly adequate local color.
But when, first, the detectives are suspended for treating the dwarf a tad too roughly (for instance, he  dies in custody) and then Digger is shot and reported killed, Cotton Ed lets his slip show a little.  He  becomes a frenzied dynamo of barely contained brutality as he tears a steaming hot Harlem apart  searching for the cache of heroin that led to the whole mess.  This is a terrific entry in the series and is  particularly interesting for Himes's fearsome hostility towards the drug traffic which was blighting the  inner-city even then.  His attitude makes for an interesting contrast with the permissive modern  attitude of many black leaders, who decry harsh prison sentences for drug dealers.  It's awfully hard to  see Coffin Ed, Grave Digger, or Chester Himes arguing that pushers are victims of an unjust drug war.
GRADE : A
2845265
The most common failing of any mashup is that the parts aren't true to their origin, & the result is somehow less than the sum of its parts.  Paul Cornell's London Falling combines a police procedural with dark urban fantasy, and retains both the grittiness of the former with the wonder and awe of the latter.

The book opens as a straight police procedural.  We see the culmination of a long undercover operation to arrest the leader of a large portion of the organized crime in London.  When the suspect dies a shocking and strange death while in custody, a small group of police officers are tasked with cleaning up the mess that the investigation has become.  They follow a lead into an abandoned house, where a strange encounter leaves the police officers with the Sight.  That is, the ability to see the hidden supernatural nature of the city.  It turns out that their prey is a centuries old witch who has been abducting and killing children, among other victims.

Unlike most urban fantasy, Cornell's magical London is a horrible place.  There is blood sacrifice, murdered children, horrible things in the shadows, and other dangers.  The detectives are stumbling around trying to find the rules of this place, and the reader along with them.  They struggle to achieve the few answers that they can find, and we are left with as much mystery as the characters themselves.

Rather than having his characters respond with a gleeful acceptance of this other state of reality, Cornell has the characters respond the way that people actually do after a trauma.  There is denial, followed by a certain amount of acceptance, and ultimately a reliance on routine.  There's a sense that the familiar procedure of police work is all that is keeping them sane.  And their procedure is what they count on to resolve the situation.  The difference being that this time it's (literally) a wicked witch, and not a drug lord or other criminal. Just as this reliance on procedure grounds the characters, it also grounds the story for the reader.  The mental reactions of all the police officers are thus relatable.

London Falling is a fast paced gritty dark fantasy that should appeal to fans of both police procedurals and urban fantasy.  Despite the dark subject matter, it was a very entertaining read.  While the story is complete in his volume, there does seem to be a setup for future stories in this world.  Hopefully they'll be just as compelling.
2542389
Ash is a typical police detective. Overworked, underpaid, emotionally hardened by seeing too much of the underbelly of society. He drinks too much and feels guilty about it, but thinks he can't do the job without the slight blur of alcohol and the crutch it gives him. He is still recovering from a bullet wound and suffers early onset arthritis. Just your typical cop doing his job.

Unfortunately this typical cop has to deliver a death notice. Something he has done before but has never grown accustomed to. Worse yet, this death notice must be delivered to a member of his own family.

Opening dramatically and with non-stop plot twists, turns and action this typical cop shows us that there is nothing typical about being a detective. As he tries to balance the investigation into the death of a family member, his deteriorating physical condition, love for his wife and daughter and his religious and spiritual life as a Muslim, Ash finds himself plunging rapidly into a downward spiral of lies and emotional withdrawal. Seeing no way out of his problems he follows his decisions to their conclusions regardless of consequence.

Mr. Culver takes us deep into a tale of betrayal hidden in a world of high finance and political power. The characters he introduces always add to the storyline and move the plot forward and are well drawn and complete. The plot has enough twists and turns to keep it moving forward at a fast pace. It was a great read and I will be back to follow Ash in his next offering.

Karen Bryant Doering
3180822
Fleeing a personal tragedy as a NYC detective, Simon Ziele has settled in a new job in Dobson, a quiet city just north of New York City. Hoping for a less stressful life, Ziele is disappointed when called to the home of a well-off widow whose niece, Sarah Wingate, has just been brutally murdered. While New York seethes with the questionable results of a recent election and the outrageous machinations of Tammany Hall, Ziele realizes that murder respects no boundaries and has found him where he thought to escape. Applying the turn-of-the -century investigative tools police departments have recently embraced, Ziele is a man of the future, willing to try new methods, like fingerprinting, to solve crimes in 1905.

All the more mysterious, then, is the approach of criminal behavioral specialist Alistair Sinclair, who contacts Ziele from his offices at Columbia University to inform the detective of the identity of the murderer, one Michael Fromley. It seems Sinclair has been studying the patterns of criminals, especially this particular subject, hoping to use this information to rehabilitate criminals before their anti-social behaviors are firmly entrenched. Certainly, Sinclair's premise is tempting to Ziele, as is the behaviorist's intention to reform the system, intervening before a life of crime has become irreversible. The moral boundaries of such a task are more troubling. Ziele's dilemma is how much to believe in Sinclair's studies and whether he can trust a man with a private agenda.

Therein we find the heart of this thriller, the conflict between evidence and the murkier science of predicting criminal behavior. Ziele must find the murderer before he strikes again. He must decide whether Fromley is the culprit or a distraction, with hard evidence to back up his case. Using all of the tools available to him, Ziele tempers his instincts with a healthy cynicism, resisting Sinclair's compelling arguments. The author flavors her thriller with the authenticity of historical detail, a mix of politics and police procedure with the addition of the burgeoning field of behavioral psychology. The result is a wonderful mix of Ziele's naivet&eacute;, natural curiosity and common sense, along with Sinclair's passionate desire to advance behavioral studies and criminology. Can a criminal be rehabilitated? When murder is the issue, the stakes are high and mistakes costly. Luan Gaines/2009.
90400
The Toy Taker is the third in the DI Sean Corrigan series.  The author is a former detective with the result that the story has many small touches which give it a very authentic feel which is lacking in many police procedurals. I read the second in the series recently and there were so many references to what had gone before that I felt one should really have read the first in the series to understand the background.  However, I would say that this story is much more a standalone book.

Corrigan is a detective with an intuitive approach which enables him to make leaps of imagination to really get into the head of the perpetrator he is after.  All his cases seem to involve crazies of one sort or another so it helps that he is just a little bit crazy, or at best highly obsessive himself.  However this time round his intuition seems initially to have deserted him and he is forced back on the more methodical, traditional police methods of painstakingly going through the available data and looking for linkages.  All the while he is being put under intense time pressure by a superior, which does not help him to analyse the situation in his preferred way.

I do like the approach of this author.  His books are interesting and could certainly be described as page turners without the plots being unnecessarily over complicated.  It is a pleasure observing as Corrigan gradually teases out the truth, but not without going up a few blind alleys on the way.  The next instalment in the series will certainly be on my reading list.
1461875
Top-notch new entry in the rapidly growing field of Scandinavian crime novels that have been translated into English.  This is a police procedural centered on three interesting and three-dimensional investigators.  They are trying to find out what happened to a little girl who went missing from a train.  The plot, of course, thickens.

For me, the compelling thing about this book was the characterization, and the interplay among the investigators.  The characters have assumptions about each other that get tested, and they don't fall into the "character actor" slots that people in police novels often do.  The plot was compelling, though the ending was a bit too easy to see in advance.
4193169
Nico Sirsky is the head of the Paris Criminal Investigation Division, the brigade criminelle. His title, as translated is Chief of Police. The brigade criminelle has 12 squads of six officers, with a commander in charge of each. Sirsky reports Michel Cohen, deputy police commissioner. Together they determine how to present a case of homicide to the public prosecutor who assigns an investigating magistrate to oversee the efforts of the police and to obtain necessary warrants and writs. Invariably autopsies are done by professor Armelle Vilars, "a fiery redhead with a sharp wit" and the hardest working medical examiner in France.

This is just a hint of the depth and breadth of Frederique Molay's description of French police bureaucracy and criminal justice system. The remains of the rational systems of Descartes and Richelieu, characterized by differentiation of functions and centralization of power, are apparent in the structure of those departments charged with investigating murders and convicting murderers.

The police officers themselves are a bloodless lot. Even though they will be described as angry, frustrated or in the case of Sirsky suddenly in love (a situation that begins "The City of Blood" and which is completely unconvincing) but what really defines all the members of the elite murder squad is their complete commitment to their work, more like the dedication of medieval monks than 35 hour a week civil servants. All of them feel honored to serve in the Criminal Investigation Division, love their jobs and work 18 hour days whenever necessary. Sirsky himself works around the clock at least once in each investigation.

The murders in each of the Paris Homicide novels--this one plus "Crossing the Line" and "The City of Blood" are extremely brutal and include sexual assault, mutilation of corpses and always a LOT of blood. They are solved by the unceasing work of the detectives and the usual brilliant deductive leaps by the protagonists.

Well written and translated, recommended for mystery fans who like the nitty-gritty of police work
4871327
An inventive, articulate detective story. Gideon is a police detective with his police dog as his "assistant".  Very intriguing, full of movie, literary, and music references. i liked the fact that Gideon had his own demons that he was trying to deal with. I would give it 5 stars, except that I started to get tired of all the snappy repartee and wisecracking at some point, somewhat like a delicious food that has been somewhat overseasoned.
4436602
THE DARK ROOM is an excellent police procedural--for me, a rarity among mystery/thrillers, because it held my interest as I read it straight through without ever considering a peek at the ending to see if the rest was worth my time. Set convincingly in the San Francisco Bay Area, the novel introduces a new character, SFPD detective Gavin Cain, who I hope will return in subsequent series novels.

In the novel, Cain is in the midst of exhuming a body, when he's urgently summoned to investigate a blackmail letter received by San Francisco's mayor (Harry Castelli).  The blackmailer doesn't want money; rather, the blackmailer wants the mayor's death.  To encourage the mayor's suicide, there are four photographs of a beautiful, terrorized woman in a dark room that are included with the blackmail letter--and more photos, presumably worse, are promised, with a threat to make the next set of photos public.

The mayor denies any knowledge of the woman, and Cain knows he's lying, but Cain has no choice but to try to investigate and to identify the woman.  A friend with powerful image-searching software provides some help, and then it begins to look like Cain's exhumation may be connected to the blackmail case.  Cain gets more needed help from a sharp FBI agent (Karen Fischer), as he follows the threads that develop into a locked-room mystery and that uncover several more long-ago murders.

This is a well-written novel, with various other well-developed characters (e.g., Grassley, Chun, Lucy, Alexa).  The novel has a plot that resolves into a satisfying reveal, and the tying up of all the loose ends.  The San Francisco setting is well done.  The forensics, mostly involving autopsies, appear to be quite solid.
2635941
When Homicide and Major Crimes is called out to investigate a stolen tractor, they're not exactly thrilled. But the new police commissioner considers rural crime a priority so they just have to suck it up. However, when it is linked to a possible murder in a vacant hangar at an abandoned WWII airfield, the disappearance of two local lads, and a gruesome discovery at the scene of a crashed lorry, the case becomes a lot more interesting for DCI Banks and his team.

This is the 22nd  Inspector Banks novel by author Peter Robinson and I read it under the title, In the dark Places. But regardless of title, it is clear that Robinson still knows how to write a compelling and intelligent police procedural. The thing I like about his novels - he's never flashy, there are no wild car chases through major thoroughfares, his characters, though well-rounded, aren't extraordinarily beautiful, witty, or able to solve crimes with little more than a random throw-away line apropos seemingly of nothing and the use of their little grey cells. They investigate crime scenes and follow the clues and put hard work into solving the case. There is, to be sure, some graphic and rather disturbing violence here especially as much of the story is set in abattoirs but this violence fits into the story and never feels gratuitous. Like the other books in the series, this entry is grounded in real possibility. There are lots of twists and the occasional dumb but human mistake by a character but it never stretches the credulity of the reader.

Banks himself is missing for part of the story and, this time, it is the lasses who get to have most of the fun especially DS Winsome Jackman who may have found a possible love interest. When Banks is present, his signature music obsession is also in evidence and, to be honest, I kind of prefer the title Abattoir Blues. It seems more fitting because it references not only the setting but the song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (great song) which links it nicely to the last DCI Banks novel (and my favourite T-Rex song), Children of the Revolution.  But,  again, regardless of title, this is a well-written, intelligent, and satisfying mystery and I recommend it highly.
752473
Dark, violent, and filled with non-stop action, this British PI novel, set on the meanest streets of Manchester and Newcastle, features Cal Innes, a PI who claims that he became a detective because "I got good at tracking down ex-offenders, maybe because I was one." Newly released from prison, Cal has been talked into doing a "favor" for Morris Tiernan, a Manchester crime lord responsible for more than thirty murders. Afraid that his psychopathic son Mo will mess up the job, Tiernan has "persuaded" Cal to find Rob Stokes, a dealer in Tiernan's private gambling club who stole ten thousand dollars and disappeared. Once Cal finds Stokes, he is to contact the sadistic Mo, who will then take over.

Cal and Mo have a "history." Cal considers Mo responsible for the more than two years he had to spend in jail. Mo, in turn, is jealous that his father has assigned Cal to find Stokes, and he wants to find Stokes first. The narrative, alternating between the point of view of Cal Innes and that of Mo Tiernan, is easy to follow, since Mo is terminally dense, and his narrative, peppered with local street slang and obscenities, becomes mordantly humorous. Cal, who often finds his fists more useful than his brain, is not much more literate than Mo, but he is looking for a direction in life--if only to stay out of jail--and he does understand how the world works.

As the search for Stokes moves from Manchester to Newcastle, where Stokes appears to have fled with a sixteen-year-old girl, the action--and gore--ratchet up. Cal is not only dodging vicious Mo Tiernan, he is also trying to avoid a brutal Manchester policeman who has accused him of assault. As Cal comes closer to finding Stokes and the girl, he also becomes a real detective, discovering aspects of Mo Tiernan's life which make the search for Stokes and the girl even more pressing--and make Mo's determination to find and stop Cal more urgent.

Bleak and full of violence, the novel features fights, an attempted drowning by toilet bowl, beatings, and legs broken by cricket bat--and that's by the "good guys"! Cal, of course, is on both the giving and receiving ends of this brutality. The characters throughout the novel are universally unlikable, the twists and turns of the action reveal even more depravity than previously imagined, and the "surprise" ending brings no catharsis with it. Banks creates vivid scenes filled with specific details--everything from brands of cars, complete with dents, to close-up depictions of torture and maiming. Focused on man's inhumanity to man and the unavoidability of misery, this is noir fiction at its "noir-est." n Mary Whipple

<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Big-Blind/dp/1930997280/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Big Blind</a>
4667303
While Others Sleep is an intense and gripping police procedural set in the snow and cold of Minnesota. Bergsgaard is a retired 30-year veteran with the US Dept of Treasury and the MN Dept of Criminal Apprehension and youd expect him to have a few stories.

The book has a variety of strengths: three crimes drawn from the headlines solved with old-fashioned and innovative police work, well-drawn portraits of both the colorful major and minor characters, cop humor, sharp dialogue and a knowledge of undercover police procedural tactics.  It also includes lots of in-the-know scenes of police interviews, a variety of locales, squad room camaraderie with bureaucratic  jealousies, gossip and black humor mixed with ambition and dedication. This is the kind of stuff you cant make up. You have to live through it. Then be a damn good writer to tell it so well.

As to spelling errors and formatting problems that another reviewer mentioned, I was so caught up in the deft way he wove together three plots I scarcely noticed any. Were there any? I might also mention there were snippets of dialogue where I simply laughed out loud.
2677195
It follows back and forth from his perspective and her perspective following a missing wife and the police investigation leading to the husband being the possible suspect.
848762
This isn't your usually whodunnit. Sure, it's a police procedural, starring Jack Carston. But in many respects, this is a study in psychology, with a whole raft of subtle questions raised in the reader's mind. What is it that brings a person to murder, and in what respect is that person different from everyone else. The difference between the law, and justice. The way in which people are valued - is the life of a homeless drunk of less value than a well-heeled businessman? Can you really say some people deserve what they get?

The story starts with a suicide, then follows the narrative of the suicide's brother as he decides to take 'justice' into his own hands. In a second story arc, Carston is quite happy when thuggish people who had committed grave crimes disappear. But when a man of wealth and power is murdered, he has to start looking for patterns. As usual in a whodunnit, there are red herrings and complexities which Carston must solve.

The novel is well written and I found it compelling, fascinating and chilling. The medical details are authentic. My only complaint (and it is a personal preference) is that I don't like omniscient POV, because I find it distracting.

That said, this is a novel I'll be mulling over for a long time. Good job, Mister Kirton.
3526075
When this series started, back in the early 90s, I wasn't at all sure it was going to work. Detective Superintendent  Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, in the West Country, was an abrasive and overweight bully. In fact, his high-handedness got him sacked and he spent the second book working security for a London department store. But Lovesey got him under control and Diamond settled down to a continuing and successful police career chronicled in writing and plots of generally high quality. In this sixteenth outing, two uniformed cops going to investigate a late-night 999 call crash their car, with the young driver being killed and his sergeant losing a leg. Protocol, of course, demands a thorough Professional Standards investigation of the circumstances, to determine fault, if any, and Diamond gets landed with it, much to his disgust. Then, at the scene, he discovers an old man who was apparently thrown by the police car over an adjacent railway embankment -- still alive, but just barely. The newspapers immediately run CIVILIAN PEDESTRIAN STRUCK BY POLICE CAR stories, but maybe the old guy ran his adult-size tricycle out in front of the police, which would make it his fault.

But as Diamond begins digging into the old mans background, he finds clues that not everything is as it appears. The man was part of a group of railway hobbyists -- but maybe he was also a thief. And possibly a serial killer. Diamond knows he would never get permission to pursue the matter officially, so he enlists the aid of two of his best people and they do it the hard way. Its a complicated plot but it mostly holds together and Loveseys style moves things along briskly. Im rather surprised the BBC hasn't picked up this series.