77

hen.

22 — Wednesday, June 27, 1990 - North Shore News

Take a walk on the wild
side with chilling Mercy

AUTHOR EXPOSES THE ‘LETHAL LIBIDO’

style: David Lindsey’s fictional but fact-packed Mercy

| his week we have two first-class cop novels, Texas-

and Rush, a tale of highs and lows in the narcotics
trade by ex-narc Kim Wozencraft. Both are summer

sizzlers.

She was 21, fresh out of the
police academy and eager to do
whatever her role as an under-
caver drug cop — and her experi-
enced partner — demanded.

That partner was Jim Raynor, the
captain of the Pasadena PD’s
Criminat Investigation Unit and a
man who had long ago discovered
that there was indeed a thin line
between law and disorder.

Raynor nad stepped over it so
long ago that the only demarca-
tion he recognized anymore
wasn’t blue, but white: the chalky
line of cocaine he needed to cope
with another hour or two of stress
playing the deadly game of deep-
cover narc. Raynor wasn’t winning
the war on drugs, he was losing.
Badly.

Uppers, downers, heroin, coke
— whatever a cop had to do to
make his (or her) act convincing to
con outlaw biker scum, dope-
running rednecks and the rest of
the Texas drug scene was part of
the job for Raynor — and tor
Kirsten Cates, the green rookie
assigned to him.

And anyway, cops are smarter,
tougher, more resistant than the
pathetic losers they see crouched
in a seamy ‘shooting gallery’ or
huddled in urine-soaked rags in a
garbage-strewn alley. Raynor can
handie it, Cates can handle it.

if their superiors sense a prob-
lem, they're not letting on, Results
are what count. Arrests mean
good pubicity, praise and promo-
tions for the department's brass.
Sometimes you have to give your
people a little rope, some
breathing space — and look the
other way.

It’s hard to believe that Rush
(Random House; 260 pp.; $24.95)
is Wozencraft's first novel. This
story of a young woman’s descent
into a hell of drug addiction,
where cops become criminals, is a
brutally realistic piece of writing
that earns top marks for the author

and provides a gripping tale of lies,
lusts and treachery for the reader.
Fans of David Lindsey (A Cold
Mind won't be disappointed with
his latest walk on the the warped
side of human psyches, the ten-
sion-laced, spine-tingling Mercy
(Doubleday; 513 pp.; $24.95).

MIKE
STEELE

book review

Linsey excels in mood-setting:
grim, clinically accurate crime
scenes, precise police procedures
and an almost documentary ap-
proach to his tales of mayhem are

y now trademarks of this Austin,
Texas writer. Mercy is no excep-
tion.

As sweat-drenched days are
followed by sheet-soaking nights,
Houston residents fantasize about
relief from the cloying heat. But
Carmen Palma, 33, divorced and
the lone woman on the city’s
homicide squad, has other fan-
tasies on her mind: the deadly fan-
tasies of a lethal libido.

She and her seasoned partner,
Det. John Birley, are investigating
the second in what promises to be
a string of gruesome murders in-
volving bondage, beatings and
sexual mutilation.

The victims were both finan-
cially secure, attractive women.
They apparently knew their
assailant — or thought they did.
Because while they may have
been involved in the fantasy-laden
world of bisexual S&M, neither
woman expected her pain-induc-
ed pleasure to be terminal.

Palma and Birley are confound-
ed by the insular ethics of a covert
group of women, primarily

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wealthy, whose bisexuality is a
secret not even their spouses
know.

Fear of exposure and the
devastating effects such a revela-
tion would have on their careers
and families make them reluctant
to ccoperate, even though they
don’t condone the practices of the
sadomasochistic minority in their
coterie.

Now their silence is killing them.

Mercy is emphatically notto be
confused with the trashy slasher ti-
tles that seem designed only to
appeal to the lowest common
denominator of seader. What
Lindsey does do in Mercy is ex-
plore the dynamics of psychosex-
ual seria! killings and their roots in
sexually-abusive family relation-
ships. This is nct an exploitation,
but an exploration of the legacy of
that abuse.

Lindsey also exhibits a rare
compassion for the alternative
lifestyles of those whose sexual
orientation differs from that of the
mainstream. Palma’s mother gent-
ly reminds her at one point in the
investigation that she should
remember that women are human
beings first and women second;
their choice of bed partners is ir-
relevant to their humanity.

As usual, Lindsey has gone to
extraordinary lengths to ensure
that his novel accurately reflects
investigative procedures and
methodologies. And it shows. This
is an entirely believable and
shocking behind-the-scenes grapp-
ly with the demons among us.

owt

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IN MERCY, David Lindsey shows

For further info i
his talent for mood-setting. u rmation

phone:

200-006

The book? The biting, satirical
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