In this sequel to the critically-acclaimed The Commission, Sam Kincaid and Kate McConnell are back. They must struggle to keep the witnesses to an armored car robbery alive.
Walter Bradshaw is being held for the botched robbery, but his followers—members of the Reformed Church of the Divine Christ—are ensuring that witnesses to the crime never make it to the stand. Are these boys hardened criminals or boys with nowhere else to go?
April 28, 2008
In Norman's solid sequel to his well-received debut, The Commission (2007), cops Sam Kincaid and Kate McConnell try to unsnarl a tangle of crimes in Salt Lake City. First, Kate investigates the brutal murder of one witness to a botched armored car robbery, followed by the disappearance of the other witness. Then Sam, head of \x93a unit within the Utah Department of Corrections called the Special Investigations Branch,\x94 gets involved because the gang's mastermind is \x93prophet\x94 Walter Bradshaw, a fanatical Mormon polygamist currently awaiting trial for the armored car holdup. Meanwhile, Sam has to cope with a new, excessively by-the-book boss and a lawsuit from his ex-wife seeking custody of their daughter. As personal and bureaucratic tensions almost sidetrack the investigators, Sam and Kate have to prove how smart and stubborn they are. Norman isn't an especially slick author, but he has a good grasp of police procedure and writes with the same dogged, decent persistence that Sam displays.
March 1, 2008
After one witness in a capital murder case against the leader of a violent fundamentalist group is killed, the second witness goes into hiding. This sequel to "The Commission" reunites Sam Kincaid, a cop with the Utah Department of Corrections, with Lt. Kate McConnell of the Salt Lake City Police. Not as tightly written or plotted as its predecessor; for libraries owning "The Commission".
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 1, 2008
Accountant Arnold Ginsberg is murdered just before he is to appear as a witness against Mormon polygamist Walter Bradshaw, accused of robbery and murder. Another witness, Robin Joiner, is almost kidnapped and is now on the run. Salt Lake City homicide detective Kate McConnell and her boyfriend, Sam Kincaid of the Utah Department of Corrections Special Investigations, must find Ginsbergs murderer and locate Robin before she is also killed. In the course of the investigation, Kate and Sams romance continues to blossom, and Sam must deal with disciplining an employee and his ex-wifes attempt to gain custody of their young daughter. Moving from Sams point of view to a broader, third-person perspective, Norman keeps the action moving with numerous plot twists while also developing his central characters effectively. This is a fast-paced, suspenseful mystery that will pique interest in the next installment in the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)