TIME EXPIRED

Berkeley's Homicide Detective Jill Smith (Death and Taxes, 1992, etc.) is the negotiator in a hostage threat, played out in a local canyon, that turns out to be phony but seems to be connected to a rash of mostly harmless practical jokes recently plaguing the hated cops of the parking-meter squad. Overlooking the canyon is a small nursing home where Jill, looking for clues to the joker, finds Madeleine Riordan, onetime hotshot lawyer, civil-rights activist, and police adversary. She's dying of cancer, sharing a cottage with frail patient Claire Wellington, and under the care of aide Michael Wennerhaver. Fending off Jill's questions, Madeleine asks her to return the next night. Jill does—only to find Madeleine dead, and not of natural causes. Where is her veterinary husband Herbert Timms through all this? Why have the pranks against the police taken on a vicious edge since Madeleine died? Who couldn't wait for her imminent death and why? A tense, surprising, last-minute confrontation answers the questions and tests Jill's skills and smarts to the max. Despite occasional sags and Jill's tiresome musings on Madeleine's psyche: an adroitly plotted, consistently interesting police procedural and one of the author's best.