Cold Edge

Overworked police detective Lucas Stonecoat finds himself juggling two gruesome murder investigations, an old flame and a tempting new co-worker in Walker's latest mystery (following Blind Instinct). The Houston police department endures a lot of bad press when two women are found scalped, with their hands chopped off and Native American pictographs carved into their flesh. Lucas's prejudiced superiors, assuming that he is an expert on scalping because of his American Indian heritage, assign him to the case along with forensic psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger. The quarrelsome duo question a pompous and uncooperative psychiatrist who treats recently released felons and team up with two rather stereotypically portrayed detectives from a different precinct. In the midst of the investigation, Lucas is distracted by his grandfather's serious illness, the marital strife of his first love and another case involving a beheading. Walker's stilted dialogue and typecast supporting characters do nothing to enhance the romance brewing between Lucas and Meredyth, but diehard mystery readers who can stomach the meticulously depicted, grisly crime scenes will appreciate the narrative's momentum and procedural details. (Mar.)