KIRKUS REVIEW
Twenty-four hours of English village police work in the Sopworth Section. The home life and social problems of each of the bobbies and their officers is sketched--teenage-sex, terminal illness--but mainly the story is small-talk and routine investigations and arrests. . . until an unusual wave of violence erupts. P. C. Cooper and Sergeant Noble, you see, are hurt in an explosion when a flashlight in the front yard of Cooper's house proves to be a bomb. Then a brickyard worker walks into the station house and admits to blowing off the heads of his young wife and her lover when he found them in his bed the night before. Plus: a jackknifed truck has traffic in gridlock with bodies and other injured folks lying about amid petrol fumes; a man picked up for stealing timber confesses to last year's murder of a teenage girl. And, for a climax, a motorcycle gang charges hellbent into Sopworth--and a colossal Hollywood punch-up with the bobbies takes place in a dance hall. Like Wainwright's mysteries: overdone and violence-happy; but the pure-procedural format suits his nitty-gritty approach better than his usual trick-plots.