Sacrifice

Two stars. Solely awarded for keeping me interested despite the inherent problems with this book. First problem was the clichéd plot; wealthy man beloved by all is murdered on his big night. Obviously not everyone found him so wonderful. How many times has this been used by authors, playwrights and movie producers? Second problem is the character of Mrs. Supercop; she’s about to turn 40 and hits mid-life crisis for women – she wants a baby. Ugh. Can’t we for once have a woman who isn’t a slave to some mythological biological clock? The way she wrestles with her latent femininity and her work ethic is right out of some Characterization 101 handbook. The third problem is that it’s poorly researched. Not only do we have glaringly wrong forensic procedure (plastic bags over the hands and a pathologist who only uses the liver temp to gauge TOD – please), but we also get bad police procedure as well. On what planet exactly two partners be allowed to marry each other and stay partners? Sloppy. Those are the big problems, but there are small ones, too. Maybe not problems exactly, but things that bugged me. Mostly it had to do with the supporting characters starting with Mr. Supercop, her husband. And believe me, we couldn’t escape that fact for more than a few paragraphs. Someone, mostly Mr. & Mrs. Supercop, were always referring to their marital status by using their new states of being in context – my husband this and your wife that. It was nauseating. Mr. Supercop himself was portrayed as kind of a dunce. Was this just to make Mrs. Supercop, not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, appear smarter? He was also harboring the usual feelings of resentment because he had to actually work for his wife and she outranked him. And then there is his violent streak where he just had to start a fight or get all up in someone’s face about something. When the man wasn’t getting into fights, he and the missus were having homey little encounters underscored with a heavy component of lust. He was caring and sensitive despite his macho exterior. Bleah. The man is a walking cliché. Then there was the Grieving Widow. She’s gorgeous and semi-successful and she and Mrs. Supercop hate each other on sight. She’s secretive, antagonistic and confrontational – all things designed to make us hate her on sight as well. And we do, with good reason, she’s having an affair and her whole grief thing is just an act. Of course she turns out to be at the heart of the plot. But the bad part is that instead of building a case against her over time, Mr. & Mrs. Supercop decide to confront her on her behavior when her behavior doesn’t amount to anything criminal. Morons.And then there’s the local Sheriff who is portrayed as homey and simple, but hiding a mind like Sherlock Holmes’s. He’s earnest and doesn’t want to get in the way, he just wants to help and at the behest of the widow, they can’t really shut him out. So they let him in on a lot of detail that no rational cop would ever disclose to anyone outside the team. After a bit, I became very suspicious of the fact that Sheriff Holmes showed up at mighty convenient times – say after a shooting that almost killed Mr. or Mrs. Supercop. What was up with that?Of course there has to be a foil for Mrs. Supercop’s genius and that would logically be either a superior officer or a junior one. I guess the author couldn’t make up his mind because we get one of each. Jane’s captain is an asshole to her from the outset. He makes life difficult for the sake of doing so and also to further his own ends, which of course are political. He’s always calling her on the carpet about something and she fights back and doesn’t back down for most of it. Ms. Slacker Cop is her cross to bear. With glowing reports from other commanding officers, Ms. Slacker applies for and gets a job on Mrs. Supercop’s homicide squad. Jane hopes that the two will be allies in a department full of the usual chauvinist bullshit. But Slacker is a fuckup and soon Mrs. Supercop learns that the other officers were charmed into writing nice things about her and really just wanted get her out of their precincts. This time though, Ms. Slacker has found someone she can’t charm. We want her to get her comeuppance and she does in a very satisfying way. There is also, of course, a TV reporter mixed up in all of this. Mrs. Supercop is trying to make friends with TV Babe, but has to walk a fine professional line. TV Babe is fair, but determined and is getting Network’s attention so naturally she becomes another victim in due course. The last major cliché we deal with is the semi-unknown person who has vital information about the case, but will not come forward. Instead, this information is sent via cryptic letters, which at first baffle the team. Once again, the person is so afraid that despite their anonymity, they cannot just come out and say why the victim was a victim and disclose their insider information. Noooo, everything has to be in some insane code known only to the shadowy scaredy cat. Eventually, they do figure out one nugget and then the rest opens up for them.So in the end Mr. & Mrs. Supercop figure out the Sheriff Holmes angle – he is at the right place at the right time because he has been doing the wrong thing. He killed the philanthropist. I figured this out as soon as the second piece of information was given. First we were told that he was divorced and his one and only child was dead. Then it was discovered that Mr. Philanthropist was guilty of intentionally allowing pollutants into a water supply and this act resulted in the death of a few kids. Bingo. Mr. Sheriff on a revenge plot. But how did he get tipped off since the case was long since settled out of court and was the impetus for Mr. Philanthropist’s zeal for setting up charities and funding huge hospital wings? The mysterious person sending information? Nope. She is the recipient of the same information that Mr. Sheriff received. The leaker is the Grieving Widow. She got sick and tired of Mr. Philanthropist giving away their fortune. But she couldn’t act directly; she had to try to goad one of the wronged parents’ into taking action. And Mr. Sheriff bit. Once he read the internal memo that Mr. Philanthropist knew that he was poisoning people way before he actually stopped doing it, he went over the edge. He killed the homeless guys as a cover to dilute the meaning of the real victim of the crime.But the Grieving Widow wasn’t just guilty of engineering the death of her husband and the others. She actually did murder someone herself; the up and coming reporter. TV Babe confided to the Grieving Widow that she found some information that would blow the case wide open. She went to prison to interview Mr. Philanthropist’s former lawyer (in jail for some other shady deal) who is conveniently dying of cancer. She gets a deathbed confession that it was he who told the Grieving Widow about the damning internal memo and helped her get things in motion.So the denouement is to have Mrs. Supercop go to Mr. Philanthropist’s company headquarters in search of evidence. The Grieving Widow, whose message is purported to come from hubby, sends her there. She knows that Mr. Sheriff is also there and just as he’s about to plug Mrs. Supercop, hubby shows up and rescues boss wifey, thereby rescuing his flagging ego as well. Mr. Sheriff eats his own gun and the Grieving Widow is arrested, but not before there is a struggle and her once flawless face gets mauled. Bah. I can’t believe I read the whole thing.