THE MONSTER SQUAD

Forget the bad guys: The real monsters of Loren County, Oreg., are the cops on the graveyard shift. When former LAPD vice cop Caitlin O'Neil arrives in town to take charge of this gang of cretins and sociopaths, both the local perps (drunks, flashers, peepers, the occasional B and E) and her memories of L.A.'s mean streets pale beside her love-in with her rough-edged charges -- some of whom clearly have another kind of love-in in mind. O'Neil, hitting the ground running, curses out her men like a drill sergeant, fines them for obscenity, insubordination, and sleeping on the job, and exiles Allan Sims, the smartest and mouthiest of them, to the dullest patrol zone. The squad, a family of X-rated refugees from Police Academy, breaks into her new place, sends her dildos, and slashes her tires. Sims, always the most incorrigible, even gets killed, leaving behind an underage Thai hooker in his cruiser's trunk and, almost as an afterthought, an unsavory aroma of county-wide corruption that would make quite a mystery in a more vigorously plotted book. First-novelist Angus sets up his likeable, foulmouthed heroine and her supporting cast as heartlessly as if he were writing a sitcom pilot. Now that he's assembled his characters, maybe he'd like to give them a story.