RANDOM DEATH

Yet another package from the Egan/Shannon police Fries--this time focusing on Glendale Police Dept. detective Delia Riordan, whose ailing father and lingering regrets on a lost love provide the drab human interest here. The police-work includes the standard assortment of murder and mayhem: a dead prostitute whose pimp is nailed for the murder; the senseless shotgun killing of a ten-year-old; a missing waitress whose killer is found by use of a police artist's sketch. Three cases, however, do offer a bit more in the way of texture: a brutal attack on a youth, brought about inadvertently by an undercover drug investigation at the local high school; a graphically-detailed child-abuse case which makes points (not unfamiliar ones) about the law's failures; and one touchingly resolved murder case. Otherwise, the usual shallow mixture--with dull Delia a less viable central focus than Dell Shannon's fractionally more colorful Lieut. Mendoza.