Officer Down
-and- Probable Cause
Plot lines for both novels emerge from the complex cultures that form the Chicago Police Department, but unlike most crime series that feature the same protagonist and/or same ensemble of characters, Schwegel’s first two novels feature two distinct narrators and two very different stories.
In Officer Down the central figure is Samantha Mack (aka “Smack”), a tough cop on the outside with denser, more complicated, and more compelling layers of character on the inside. So when she and her partner Fred (who used to be he lover) are gunned down in pursuit of pedophile named Marko, there is far more to resolved here than a simple case of who done it. Add to this opening scene that the bullet that killed Fred came from Smack’s gun, and that no one, not even her current lover and fellow member of the force believes her account of the incident, and that Marko’s underworld connections are far deeper than she first understood, and, well, just don’t plan to move from your chair until you reach the end of the line.
Probable Cause is a Shakespearean family story—powerful father and weaker son on the same police force—inside of a plausible account of a boy’s club of bad cops who enforce an illegal but seemingly harmless initiation ritual (robbing a jewelry store) designed to forever seal lips against anything any one of them might ever do wrong. Only for Ray Weiss, the good son who only wants to live up to the old man’s expectations for his career and thinks getting into the boy’s club is part of it, when his initiation takes place he finds a murder and no one to blame but maybe himself. Or, as Jack Fiore, the leader of the boy’s club indicates, that is how this scene of the crime could be made to look. Suddenly, Ray’s life and his career are turned upside down. What should he do? Who can he believe?
Schwegel introduces another female detective, this time Sloane Pearson, to solve the murder. Whereas Smack was a tough cop with layers of emotion and history, Pearson is a cool almost soulless character interested only in advancing her career within what she clearly understands is still largely a boy’s club. If she has emotions, she doesn’t share them with the boys. As she gets closer to the truth and Ray’s future hangs in the balance, he decides he has to do what has to be done, and so does she . . . .
Recommended for those evenings when you have the time to go from cover to cover, because you won’t want to interrupt the flow of these two narratives. Really good reads, particularly when accompanied by beer and pretzels.
Aside: I first learned of Theresa Schwegel from a great NY Times Book Review of her latest novel, Person of Interest (2007). But because I am unwilling to pay cloth prices for a crime novelist I haven’t read, and because I like to read a series in the order of publication, I opted for her first two novels, now available in reasonably priced paperback editions. After I read them (which required no more than a couple of good evenings in my easy chair) I tried to find Person of Interest in local bookstores. I was, after reading the first two installments, more than willing to fork over the $24.95 for the third one, so that ought to tell you something. That I could not locate a copy anywhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area should also tell you and her editor at St. Martin’s something. It should tell you that she ought to be on your reading list. It should tell her editor at St. Martin’s that Schwegel deserves a much larger first edition print run.
