Sleep of the Innocent

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. (July)