Monday, March 31, 2008

What Burns Within-Sandra Ruttan

What Burns Within
Sandra Ruttan
Leisure, May 2008, $7.99
ISBN 9780843960747

In Vancouver, British Columbia the three constables had worked a difficult case together last year that turned nasty; each tacitly agreed to not see one another as a means of forgetting how dysfunctionally they performed. Now Craig Nolan looks into a serial killer case; Ashlyn Hart seeks a serial arsonist; and Tain works on a serial child abduction investigation.

However, each soon realizes that the seemingly three different investigations connect. If they are to prevent the next rape, inferno and kidnapping from happening, they must work as a team, but emotions run deep as the memories of last years fiasco still burns in the professional souls of Nolan, Hart and Tain.

This is a terrific Canadian police procedural that starts off with three distinct cases and the cops having a shared history that each wants to forget; avoidance of the others is the psychological mechanism used, but out of sight out of mind fails them. When the cases intertwine none want to work with one another, but as professionals they know they must to prevent the horrros that have ouccured. Besides three lead police detectives, Sandra Ruffen merges her investigative subplots into an excellent police procedural.

Harriet Klausner

No comments: