From Publishers Weekly
Wambaugh's latest, following The Golden Orange , promises more entertainment than it delivers. The plot centers around PI Breda spok Burrows, a former LAPD detective, and three cops: hard-drinking Lynn Cutter, waiting for approval of his disability pension and retirement; Jack Graves, whose life and career were ruined when he killed a 12-year-old boy by mistake; and Nelson Hareem, an ambitious and aggressively manic young officer hoping for reassignment from the county outskirts to Palm Springs. Burrows hires Cutter to determine why the wealthy elderly husband of her client has apparently made a donation to a local sperm bank. Meanwhile, as Graves works to redeem himself, Hareem tracks a mysterious fugitive--perhaps an international terrorist-- who beat up a cop at a desert airport, stole a truck and disappeared. An unexpected resolution to Burrows's case precedes a wild chase during a celebrity golf tournament and a bloody climax at a post-tournament party. While poking fun at the Palm Springs lifestyle, Wambaugh offers plenty of his trademark cop humor, including a funny but essentially irrelevant prologue skewering President Bush and Sonny Bono. But in this case, the whole equals less than the sum of its parts. Author tour. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Wambaugh (The Golden Orange, 1990, etc.) returns to a familiar venue: glittering Palm Springs, its cops, and nearby desert canyons. This is at heart a comic novel (though not as antic as a Donald Westlake) that depends mostly on vulgar police humor for its laughs. Wambaugh circles about one of his favorite recent heroes, the alcoholic cop who will strive for recovery before story's end. Detective Lynn Cutter has screwed up so heartily with the Palm Springs PD that he is awaiting his disability pension after 20 years in the service and, while nursing his busted and irreparable knees, house-sits the mansions of wealthy local owners and drinks up his earnings at The Furnace Room, a dingy hangout for faded actors and washed-out entertainment folk. Breda Burrows, herself an ex-cop with 20 years service and now trying to make a go of her newly opened private investigation office, hires Cutter to moonlight and help out with a fresh case that has too many leads for her to handle alone. That case, which takes up a lot of time, turns out to be a red herring in terms of much action or tension, while the hard villainy remains largely in the background until the last pages and then reverses itself to plead for the reader's sympathy. The first case is a domestic surveillance in which a postmenopausal childless wife wants her millionaire husband shadowed: She knows that the old guy has made a secret deposit at a sperm bank and is apparently thinking of in vitro fertilization with a surrogate. The second case is darker: A bald Mexican drug smuggler who's hiding out in Palm Springs somehow seems tied in with the millionaire. The two detectives are joined by Nelson Hareem, a legendary screw-up from a neighboring police force, who lusts to join the Palm Springs PD by solving the drug-smuggler case. The climax is a golf-cart chase during the Bob Hope golf classic. The thuggish jokery does not endear. Wambaugh cannot write a total wipeout but this is not among his strongest or more durable works. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

ANNOTATION

The New York Times blockbuster from the author of The Golden Orange and The Glitter Dome. Determined to make her way as a P.I., ex-police officer Breda Burrows proves her mettle as she follows a fugitive from remote desert canyons to the golden boulevards of Palm Springs, from funeral parlors to swank hotels, from celebrity golf tournaments to high-speed chases.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For some, it's the pleasure capitol of the world. For others, it's a city of last chances, a paradise on the edge of the desert. For soon-to-be-ex-cop Lynn Cutter, sweating out a disability pension, it could become a point of no return.

As a rule, Cutter wouldn't give a private investigator the time of day, but Breda Burrows is the exception to every rule. Sultry, blue-eyed, long-legged, and tough as nails. Breda can be very convincing, and she's convinced Cutter to be her guide through the glittering netherworld of Palm Springs - an explosive mix of silicone, Geritol, old money, and murder.

The trail begins with the monied socialite wife of a philandering husband. The wife doesn't care about her husband's infidelity, but she does want to know why he's made a secret deposit - at a sperm bank. What Cutter wants to know is the identity of the strange, violent man hubby is meeting in the desert - a man known only as the fugitive.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Wambaugh's latest, following The Golden Orange , promises more entertainment than it delivers. The plot centers around PI Breda spok Burrows, a former LAPD detective, and three cops: hard-drinking Lynn Cutter, waiting for approval of his disability pension and retirement; Jack Graves, whose life and career were ruined when he killed a 12-year-old boy by mistake; and Nelson Hareem, an ambitious and aggressively manic young officer hoping for reassignment from the county outskirts to Palm Springs. Burrows hires Cutter to determine why the wealthy elderly husband of her client has apparently made a donation to a local sperm bank. Meanwhile, as Graves works to redeem himself, Hareem tracks a mysterious fugitive--perhaps an international terrorist-- who beat up a cop at a desert airport, stole a truck and disappeared. An unexpected resolution to Burrows's case precedes a wild chase during a celebrity golf tournament and a bloody climax at a post-tournament party. While poking fun at the Palm Springs lifestyle, Wambaugh offers plenty of his trademark cop humor, including a funny but essentially irrelevant prologue skewering President Bush and Sonny Bono. But in this case, the whole equals less than the sum of its parts. Author tour. (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews

Wambaugh (The Golden Orange, 1990, etc.) returns to a familiar venue: glittering Palm Springs, its cops, and nearby desert canyons. This is at heart a comic novel (though not as antic as a Donald Westlake) that depends mostly on vulgar police humor for its laughs. Wambaugh circles about one of his favorite recent heroes, the alcoholic cop who will strive for recovery before story's end. Detective Lynn Cutter has screwed up so heartily with the Palm Springs PD that he is awaiting his disability pension after 20 years in the service and, while nursing his busted and irreparable knees, house-sits the mansions of wealthy local owners and drinks up his earnings at The Furnace Room, a dingy hangout for faded actors and washed-out entertainment folk. Breda Burrows, herself an ex-cop with 20 years service and now trying to make a go of her newly opened private investigation office, hires Cutter to moonlight and help out with a fresh case that has too many leads for her to handle alone. That case, which takes up a lot of time, turns out to be a red herring in terms of much action or tension, while the hard villainy remains largely in the background until the last pages and then reverses itself to plead for the reader's sympathy. The first case is a domestic surveillance in which a postmenopausal childless wife wants her millionaire husband shadowed: She knows that the old guy has made a secret deposit at a sperm bank and is apparently thinking of in vitro fertilization with a surrogate. The second case is darker: A bald Mexican drug smuggler who's hiding out in Palm Springs somehow seems tied in with the millionaire. The two detectives are joined by Nelson Hareem, a legendaryscrew-up from a neighboring police force, who lusts to join the Palm Springs PD by solving the drug-smuggler case. The climax is a golf-cart chase during the Bob Hope golf classic. The thuggish jokery does not endear. Wambaugh cannot write a total wipeout but this is not among his strongest or more durable works.