Family & Friendship - Fiction, Phases of Life - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Police Stories
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Overview
In John A. Peak's novel, a world-weary cops steps out of line to investigate one more case - the death of his son. All his life, Sergeant Robert MacDonald has done virtually everything by the book. At the end of his police career, after the fatal illness of his wife of thirty years has left him deep in debt, his oldest son, also a policeman, dies under circumstances that look like suicide. Mac has had enough and refuses to believe it. While Mac mourns the death of his son, another father also grieves over a dead child - this time a daughter. As Mac begins to learn about the days leading up to his son's shooting, he finds disturbing connections that link the deaths of the two young people. The progressing investigation drags Mac deeper and deeper into those connections. He is ambushed by death and destruction that he cannot stop and almost undone as he uncovers facts about his children and himself that he should have left alone.Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
Sgt. Robert MacDonald, range officer of the Martin (Tex.) police department, has never drawn his sidearm in 36 years on the force, but he's willing to make an exception for the person who killed his son Terry. That won't do any good, insist his pals (and Terry's) on the force; Terry's death was obviously suicide—an attempt to expiate his guilt for accidentally killing Melody Arneson in a student protest that got out of hand—and the fact that the gun is missing is no big deal, since there were two days between his death and the body's discovery for it to go astray in. Since none of this is what MacDonald wants to hear about the son who followed in his footsteps, he keeps trying to pry the case open again, and in the process finds out (largely from Jimbo Phillips, the latest in a long line of Terry's partners) a lot of other things about Terry's insensitivity, his moodiness, and his proneness to explosive violence that confirm long-standing fears Terry's father had managed to suppress. At the same time, though, he feels himself closing in on the real killer, and feels confident that a face-to-face confrontation will settle matters once and for all. Don't be too sure he's right about that, or that the justice system will be eager to pick up the pieces if he's wrong.There's something for everyone in Peak's second (Spare Change, 1994), which begins in somber shadows, moves through some tangled investigations, and ends with a fine volley of gunfire.
Book Details
Published
August 1, 1997
Publisher
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Pages
368
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312151829