CUCKOO

Her first day in plainclothes, and already Detective Constable Caz Flood is on a homicidethe brutal slaying of her Brighton neighbor George Burnley. A series of similar killings, past and future, seem to mark Burnley's death as the work of a gay-bashing serial killer. But Caz, who doesn't think Burnley was gay, looks for another thread tying him to victims James Green and Peter Beecham. She finds it in Jeremy Avocado, the interior decorator two of the men had paid in cash (the third splurged on a set of Britannica instead)and in a series of lunches two of them had shared in a pub near the Grigglesham fertility clinic. Along the way, she also finds a much less welcome linkValerie Thomasthe male, avidly heterosexual personnel officer she's struck up an affair with. It sounds like a setup, of course, and eventually Caz confronts her lover with her suspicions. But more twists, lots more, lie around the corner.... A first novel that successfully melds painstaking police work and a strong romancea combination obviously aimed at fans of Prime Suspect.