Time Expired: A Jill Smith Mystery

While investigating a phony hostage situation, Jill Smith interviews lawyer Madelaine Riordan, but when she returns for a second interview and finds Madelaine dead, she must add another crime to the case.

Berkeley's Homicide Detective Jill Smith (Death and Taxes, 1992, etc.) is the negotiator in a hostage threat, played out in a local canyon, that turns out to be phony but seems to be connected to a rash of mostly harmless practical jokes recently plaguing the hated cops of the parking-meter squad. Overlooking the canyon is a small nursing home where Jill, looking for clues to the joker, finds Madeleine Riordan, onetime hotshot lawyer, civil-rights activist, and police adversary. She's dying of cancer, sharing a cottage with frail patient Claire Wellington, and under the care of aide Michael Wennerhaver. Fending off Jill's questions, Madeleine asks her to return the next night. Jill does--only to find Madeleine dead, and not of natural causes. Where is her veterinary husband Herbert Timms through all this? Why have the pranks against the police taken on a vicious edge since Madeleine died? Who couldn't wait for her imminent death and why? A tense, surprising, last-minute confrontation answers the questions and tests Jill's skills and smarts to the max. Despite occasional sags and Jill's tiresome musings on Madeleine's psyche: an adroitly plotted, consistently interesting police procedural and one of the author's best. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Policewoman Jill Smith investigates the murder of a teminally ill lawyer whose irascibility and independence of spirit mark her for better things. Smith feels that the woman's death connects somehow to recent Berkeley events involving stolen parking tickets and fake hostages. Vivid prose and constant conjecture accompany Jill as she delves into the lawyer's past for clues to elusive motivation. Despite Jill's continued romance with policeman Howard, the plot remains minimal. For series fans.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.