Another solid and entertaining police procedural from Elizabeth Linington, the Queen of them for decades. Blending the personal lives of decent cops with the shotgun scatter of cases coming at them faster than they can deal with them, all the while cognizant of their limitations due to liberal policies and lenient judges, the Ivor Maddox/Sue Carstairs series is probably my favorite of her popular procedural series, which included the groundbreaking Luis Mendoza series (writing as Dell Shannon), and the Vic Varallo series (writing as Lesley Egan), both of which are also very high quality. Linington never wrote a dud, in my opinion, and the observations made through her cops, especially in the Maddox/Carstairs series, seem even fresher and more pertinent today than they did in the prior decade in which she wrote them. The observations of her cops about criminals, segments of society, and the general decline of decency are often observation of common sense; a moral view based on traditional values, and the belief that one day there will be an accounting.

Consequence of Crime is from 1980, the tenth book in the long-running series which had thirteen entries, and spanned nearly a quarter century by the time Linington passed in 1988. Settling into their new house in Glendale, Sue, Ivor, and Sue’s mother are searching for the right dog as this one opens. What type and breed is up in the air for various reasons, but Maddox finally come up with a unique solution when he comes across a Japanese dog breed of which I’d never heard.

As usual, the cases are overwhelming the detectives we’ve come to know in both their official capacity as cops and in the personal lives, their quirks and foibles, likes and dislikes. No one was better at blending crime and domesticity than Linington, who wrote cops as human beings, as frustrated with societal decline as everyone else, and with feelings like everyone else, despite all the things they see on the job. The cases flying fast and furious at Maddox, D’Arcy, Rodriguez, Daisy, Sue and the rest of the Hollywood Wilcox Precinct in this one include:

1) A very clever and escalating spate of bad check writing that has a logical but unique unraveling.

2) A brutal rapist striking at will called Ape Man due to his overwhelming size and appearance.

3) The possible kidnapping of two young girls who may be part of a forced prostitution scheme.

4) A jumper threatening to take a cop with him, and in a position to do so.

5) A huge wedding brawl which leaves several people injured, some seriously.

6) A prostitute found dead in a car.

7) A not very nice or beloved by her peers high-profile female TV star murdered and mutilated, with both too many suspects and not enough.

8) A murdered man who it ends up was not of sterling character.

The last case, #8, has a poignant conclusion due to the reason he was murdered, eliciting sympathy for the person who killed him. One of the other cases involves a burglar finding a note and passing it on to the cops, in order to help some kids held against their will. The murder of the TV star gave Linington, through the investigation and thoughts of her cops, a chance to show the slimy and superficial world of the entertainment industry and the people who inhabit it.

As if all that isn’t enough to deal with, Metro is working out of Wilcox and underfoot in their futile but publicity driven effort to clean up prostitution once and for all, which Maddox knows is folly. Adding to the cops’ consternation is the fact that their favorite lunch spot, the Grotto, previously mentioned in other entries of the series, has been turned into a gay bar. Where’s a cop to eat?

This one ends on a very nice domestic note, with Maddox coming home to Sue and his mother-in-law, and their new dog, who is quite attached to Margaret, Sue’s mother. Before we get there, Linington used her narrative to make this observation about Hollywood and Los Angeles:

“But with bigger money elsewhere, and with the more legendary greats of earlier days faded away, the glamor had long since died, and if the gossip columns still flourished in a few tabloids, it was for a much smaller audience than formerly. Los Angeles, no longer dependent on The Business, was also no longer an overgrown small town but impersonal big city, no longer awed by ephemeral fame and money.”

She was right of course, when she speaks in this entry about the shift as the stars got smaller and the true glamor faded, and the studios’ power and influence lessened over Los Angeles, no longer being the driving industry of the town. Now however, with the internet and immediate access to just about everything, it is the shallow in every city who are awed by ephemeral fame and money, marveling on their television sets and in books and magazines at celebrities famous for simply being famous…

A good solid entry in a wonderful series of police procedurals among three that Linington penned. Probably a 4.3 on this one, so I’ll give it a solid 4, as it compares to her very finest efforts. Different from the modern-day dark and simplistic procedurals, which are usually about one murder or a series of murders by the same perpetrator, and most often filled with expletives and graphically described violence and gore that is glossed over when the book is recommended by others, Linington’s procedurals were more realistic in both their portrait of how a precinct operated, and the private lives of cops, who were just like anyone else. And she could actually write, really write, which is why for decades she reigned supreme. She never had to resort to graphic violence or gore, or expletive-filled pages to make her procedurals “tough” because they were better than that, and she was a better writer than that. ( )

Enjoyable read. ( )

Dell Shannon ( )