The Commission

This impressive debut from a criminal justice professor and former lawman exudes verisimilitude from start to finish. When Levi Vogue, chairman of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, is gunned down execution-style in his Salt Lake City driveway, Sam Kincaid, chief of the Special Investigations Branch of the Utah Department of Corrections, investigates, along with homicide detective Lt. Kate McConnell. An amateurish ransacking of Vogue's house indicates premeditated murder rather than a real burglary, and Kincaid suspects Charles "Slick" Watts, a violent ex-con with a personal grudge against Vogue. But before Watts can be arrested, his body turns up, an apparent suicide. The case gets complicated when the medical examiner finds that Watts was murdered, and Kincaid and McConnell are compelled to look elsewhere—namely to a group of corrupt state prison employees known as "the Commission." Norman is off to a fine start with this alternately gripping and repellent crime novel. (Feb.)