Lindsay Boxer is a San Francisco
homicide detective.  She is on the trail
of a serial killer who kills teenage boys when a car chase ends with her
shooting two teenagers.  She kills one
and paralyzes the other.  She was
off-duty and had alcohol in her bloodstream, over the legal limit.  The children’s father sues her.  Her career could be ruined.  She takes time off from work and goes to
stay at her sister’s house.  But she
can’t stop doing detective work, especially because there are other serial
killings going on.  Boxer meets a series
of weird and unsavory characters, but is one of them a psychopathic murderer?

I listened to this as an unabridged
audiobook, and found it compulsive listening yet utterly devoid of insight into
crime, detecting, or living.  It takes
about 8 or so hours to listen to, and there are about 150 chapters, which means
they are very short.  Often chapters
will break in the middle of a scene purely for dramatic effect, although it is
more annoying than dramatic.  Indeed,
the plot is massively implausible and the characterizations are thin.  It is fast-moving formula with no depth, on
a par with Law and Order TV shows. 
It is entertaining and keeps your curiosity up, even if Boxer is not a
particularly interesting heroine. 

The audiobook is performed by
Carolyn McCormick, who does the text justice in helping the keep the characters
separate and with consistent accents throughout the book.  It is an easy listen. 

© 2005 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved. 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island.
He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main
research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.