Unfit to Plead - Hardcover

Adroit procedural detailing and deftly orchestrated glimpses into the heart of evil produce a perceptible sense of menace in Palmer's ( Testimony ) highly assured second mystery. East Midlands career copper "Jacko" Jackson is sure he's got his man in the brutal murder of a young girl; the suspect, a childlike psychiatric patient, was once institutionalized for a somewhat similar offense. The young man, deemed incompetent, is locked away rather than tried. Several years of English life pass quickly--miners strike in the mid-80s, Jacko has a son, the English soccer team hopes to qualify for the World Cup. Readers, however, are also privy to the intensifying satanic ramblings of an unnamed man. As several more girls vanish from the area, Jacko faces his fallibility. Palmer brings facets of English society into clear focus in this work, including angry coal miners and overworked beat cops with callous superiors eager for tidy arrests. The killer's ruminations resonate powerfully, never overplayed or rendered melodramatic, as he focuses on Jacko's partner, Sgt. Heather Hurst, and readers wait, tension building, for the inevitable, graphic confrontation.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

All the evidence assures Inspector Jacko Jackson (Testimony, 1993) that Sammy Pattinson, a retarded car-cleaner for Trent Vale Enterprises who already has a record for molesting a girl when he was only 16, has kidnapped and killed Michelle Robinson. Sammy, found unfit to enter a legal plea and submit to a trial, is locked away again; Jacko's lover, Jacqueline Cruickshank, gives birth to his son; and five years pass, marked by three more disappearances of young girls from the pit village of Moorwood, before accusations against an attendant at Sammy's first mental hospital reopen his case. Jacko swiftly realizes that the real culprit is tied into TVE's Crime Catchers program--but which of the vipers at TVE, from the president's son to the program's oily host, has added buggery, satanism, and multiple murder to his r‚sum‚? Knotty, passionate, and powerful, with a typically British grasp of the social issues that set his characters at each other's throats. Jacko's a rising star who's well worth catching early on. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.