Book Review: Cop Out

Reviewed By: Carl Brookins - RAM

Cop Out     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Susan Dunlap
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural   Woman Main Character
Series: Jill Smith # 10
1997, 296 pages

Susan Dunlap has made a successful career by suspending her magnifying glass over the collection of quirks and off-balance characters who make up the city named Berkeley, California. Besides being an excellently competent writer who knows how to plot a mystery, she also pays attention to the essential humanity of the denizens of Berkeley.

COP OUT is another in the successful Jill Smith series. In this one, Smith, on the outs with her bosses who somehow believe the cops under their command ought to obey orders most of the time, sorts out multiple murders and disappearing contacts. Old time P.I. Herman Ott has called Smith with cryptic messages promising information. He fails to deliver because he goes missing early on. Ott is the principal catalyst in COP OUT, and it is hard to recall a more irritating, and at the same time interesting, character, especially when he isn't even there through most of the book.

It all begins with a cryptic message from Ott to Smith for a meeting. But Ott doesn't show up. What does show up is a body or two. Smith, fends off her increasingly irritated superiors who want to find and arrest Ott, one of the old-time, tight-lipped P.I.s who will never rat on his clients. Smith never believes Ott guilty of any of the crimes which litter the ground in this intricate story, so while completing the normal assignments of her shifts as a patrol cop, she tries to solve the mystery of Ott's disappearance and find a murderer. It all makes for a tricky balancing act. Is Smith successful? Read the book.

Dunlap successfully keeps the reader a little off-balance throughout, while at the same time infusing the book with gritty dialogue and hard- edged reality. Still, this is not your father's P.I. novel.

Carl Brookins - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

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