Sleep Of The Innocent - Hardcover

Focusing on Toronto police sergeant Rob Lucas, this third in a series ( Murder in Focus ) alternates between taut sleuthing and an intriguing love story. While the series' heroes, inspector John Sanders and photographer Harriet Jeffries, vacation in America, Lucas probes the shooting death of a corporate chairman. After he questions a young woman who had been in the mogul's apartment before the crime, he installs her in a motel and files a statement, which lists her current whereabouts. But when he returns the next day, she has fled, and two men have broken down her door and ransacked her room. His subsequent reports produce the same result: someone is going after the woman, and using police information to do so. Finally Lucas locates the witness, but refuses to bring her in until he can plug the leak in his department. Sanders returns and is assigned the case, with its missing detective and witness as well as a haphazard paper trail indicating a number of ignored but obvious suspects. Although Sanders investigates, it is Jeffries who identifies the culprits. Lucas's musings about the power of the police and his relationship with the witness elevate this tale well above the routine procedural.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Murder, blackmail, and opera are all on the agenda in this police thriller set in Toronto. The action focuses on detective Rob Lucas and his ace witness, the mysterious Stormi Knight. Knight witnesses the murder of a wealthy businessman, and Lucas stashes her, then loses, tracks, finds, and stashes her again, risking life and limb to protect her against killers he figures for renegade cops. He also falls clumsily in love with his charge and is prepared to forsake his badge in order to save her life. Meanwhile, Inspector John Sanders and his companion Harriet Jeffries do background work that identifies the culprits. Sleep isn't up to the earlier high marks set by Sale in this series (Murder in Focus, etc.), and the familiar duo of Sanders and Jeffries play small, unrevealing roles. Although the slow hunt of real detective work and the human details of the cops are illuminated skillfully by Sale, narrator Lynda Evans sounds rushed and stumbles through the text, her characterizations becoming only barely more distinct as the plot unfolds. Good for public libraries that have high demand for audio mysteries; otherwise, not recommended.
-Douglas C. Lord, Hartford P.L., CT
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.