COP OUT

In Saving Grace (1986), dour, Wales-bred Detective Inspector Huw Evans became obsessed with a beautiful vengeance-murderer--in a debut that was more courtroomdrama/soap-opera than mystery. This time, in a slightly more conventional outing, Evans hunts for a rapist--while most of the focus goes to the private lives of the Inspector's colleagues. Is the same man responsible for an escalating series--peeping, groping, rape, perhaps murder--of neighborhood sex-crimes? So Evans believes, especially when he gets an anonymous tip that leads to a posh local cad, But this trail turns out to be a wildgoose chase, one that's connected to the strained sex life of Evans' edgy new boss, elegant Supt. Richard Wilson (husband of snobbish, decadent Gina). And meanwhile Evan's brutish sidekick, Sgt. Beddoes, is becoming obsessed with student/rape-victim Sara Holroyd: at first chauvinistically abusive, Beddoes is transformed by Sara's anguished vulnerability--and helps her (despite her initial antagonism) in the psychic recovery from rape trauma. Some active police-work comes into play eventually, when the real psycho-rapist is tracked down (and Sara is saved from fatal mayhem). But this is for the most part a slow, talky psychosexual study, heavy on class conflict and thick dialect--without the lean drama that distinguished Saving Grace.