ESCAPE CLAUSE

Returning for his third (Shock Wave, 2005, etc.), Bill Tasker is positioned as usual: under a cloud.

While foiling a bank heist, the Florida state cop has gunned down the would-be perp. It’s a righteous shoot, but because Bill Tasker keeps attracting the notice of influential people who live quiet lives, he finds himself reassigned to the boonies, investigating a murder no one seems much interested in solving. The site is Florida’s Manatee Corrections Institute, the victim a young miscreant named Rick Dewalt, the usual suspects numbering around a thousand. Go through the motions, says his immediate boss, the one authority figure who has remained stubbornly well-disposed, and think of it as a semi-vacation. Going through the motions, however, is as natural to Bill as speed is to a snail, and before long he has a whole new set of best enemies, especially Captain Sam Norton, who runs Manatee like a private fiefdom. Bulldog Bill settles to his task, and then suddenly there’s another murder to solve, and another, and a nasty conspiracy to penetrate. On the other hand, prison Inspector R.A. Chin does offer aid, support and comfort. And Bill does like comfort from the ladies.

A strong, colorful cast does wonders with average material, demonstrating once again that in contemporary crime fiction, whodunit matters less than who’s-in-it.