FELONY REPORT

Another brisk procedural from the Linington-Shannon-Egan workshop, with Sergeant Ivor Maddox and Co. (of L.A.P.D.'s Hollywood precinct) handling all the usual problems--as well as a few mildly inventive ones. The standout case: a mad poisoner who does his thing with packaged supermarket hamburger, killing eleven innocents before a chance remark nails him. Among the more familiar crime-types: the gradual discovery of a dismembered body, with a surprising butcher-killer (quickly tracked after identification of the corpse); a monstrous stage mother; a couple of smooth con-men out of Pittsburgh; the O.D. death of a TV starlet; a series of rapes by a pair of Florida rednecks. And, on the domestic front, Ivor's wife/partner Sue is now pregnant. Nothing new, but no letdowns either.