THE LIARS

A second, earthily textured investigation by Scotland Yard's Supt. Bob Staunton (coarse, rude, and cockney) and Inspector Leo Wyndsor (too handsome and cocky by half), one detective team that's allowed to be only quasilikable. This time they're off to Cornwall, where a fisherman fell or was pushed off a cliff, then hung by one foot on a gibbet; since he was the area's leading ladies' man and cash smuggler, suspect-enemies abound. The village vignettes--vengeful spinsters, sparring couples--are etched in with clipped severity, in sharp contrast to the breezier jostlings of the detectives (""You're behaving like an adolescent schoolgirl, Leo""), who take their booze and women with dispatch (far more explicit sex than in the usual Scotland-Yarder). Staunton and Wyndsor are a rough pair--Britain's answer to Wambaugh?--and add another layer, however coarse, to the sturdy multilevel tradition of the British procedural.