NO VILLAIN NEED BE

Is it our irruption or is Linington becoming increasingly direful about crime--dose to the point of scaremongering--in her busy police blotters for Sergeants Ivor and Sue Maddox of LA.P.D.? This one includes a homosexual rapist and killer of little boys (his resemblance to a baseball hero lures his victims), a black house painter who kills his customers, and a violent burglary gang that terrorizes homeowners in broad daylight (including Sue's spunky mom and an 87-year-old woman who commits suicide from weary despair--""It was. . . the jungle. The jungle was too much for her in the end""). In their free time, the cops look for houses they can afford to buy and rail against the permissiveness of ""judges in the ivory tower."" More of the same--but with fewer warm-hearted types and more vicious villains around than ever before.