Blindsided (The Detective Jane Candiotti Series)

Homicide inspector Jane Candiotti's personal life is taking a turn for the better: still single and nearing 40, she's about to set up housekeeping with her partner on the force, Kenny Marks. Her future at the San Francisco Police Department is looking good too, until Skip Lacey, a former cop who's fallen on hard times, turns up dead in a railway yard, his eyes brutally gouged out. The killer's got a big score to settle, as well as a talent for turning up in the strangest places, like the funeral of Jane's father. He also has a sharpshooter's eye and a deadly aim: bent on revenge for a 15-year-old miscarriage of justice, he picks off six more cops, all in Jane's precinct.

In this second outing after the Hitchcockian Fall from Grace, which also starred Candiotti and Marks, Phillips telegraphs the killer's identity early on, but that doesn't keep the suspense from mounting. This gripping police procedural has a wallop of a denouement that will come as a surprise to most readers. The action is well paced, the characters sympathetically drawn, and the love story adds a nice touch without sinking into sentimentality. —Jane Adams