ENDANGERED SPECIES

The ninth case for Gabe Wager (Homicide, Denver P.D.; Body Guard, etc.) is actually two cases: the shooting of Tapat°os gang member Ray Moralez, and the death of a badly charred corpse in a house whose vanished tenant's paper trail is a dead end. The search for Ray's suspected killer, gang rival Flaco Mart°nez, is routine—though Burns is especially good at showing white cops persuading unwilling Hispanics to give information about Flaco—but the unknown victim leads Gabe to all sorts of goodies: an environmental terrorist, an FBI investigation, and an audacious plot to save the earth by blowing up the Rocky Flats atomic-weapons plant and bringing life in Denver to an end—an incredible scenario that Burns makes compelling by his unobtrusive mastery of procedural detail. A standout entry in this normally quiet series.