DESTINY OF DEATH

The body count is even higher than usual--as Lieutenant Mendoza and his men of the Los Angeles Police Dept. Robbery/Homicide squad battle more crime and paperwork tedium. Corpse #l is crippled Robert Maulden, confined to home, dead of poisoned bourbon (not self-administered); and Mendoza himself has to dig in before the motive and murderer are uncovered. Meanwhile, all hands are hunting a team of rapists preying on USC students. The ever-present small-time burglars and holdup artists are also in plentiful supply--while Detective Wands Larsen succeeds in finding a background and family for an illiterate, almost-mute teenager. (She killed the woman who held her in peonage for years.) And still other bodies keep turning up--young, old, in parking lots, bathtubs, dingy apartments and alleyways. Okay for Shannon police-procedural regulars--but without that extra pizzazz on display in a few recent items off the assembly-line.