One of the best Los Angeles-based mystery writers spins an intricate tale out of greed, grief, crime (of course), and hard-won redemption that starts with a bank robbery. Not just any bank robbery. Marchenko and Parsons, a pair of crude gangsters, have amassed a small fortune in a string of 12 unnecessarily violent but highly remunerative robberies and, on their 13th, despite armored vests, ended their lives and careers in a shootout with police. They never did observe the two minute rule and, after a full 10 minutes in the bank, the cops were ready for them.

The whereabouts of their fortune -- a matter of Sixteen Million dollars! -- remained unknown.

Some people are accident prone. Some, like ex-bank robber, ex-con Max Holman are magnets for tragedy. Not that 10 years in jail is a tragedy--that's justice. But, having used his time of incarceration for true, deep down soul-cleansing and getting his priorities straight, he wants nothing more on the day of his release from the half-way house (86 days after the Marchenko and Parsons take down) than to reconcile with the son he hasn't seen since the boy's 12th birthday. Now, he needs to show the man his boy has become that he --Max Holman, father -- is no longer the delinquent screw-up he once was. The tragedy part isn't that Richard became a cop but rather that he's been gunned down and killed along with 3 other officers in a nighttime ambush under an L.A. River bridge.

Holman is devastated. Taking exceptional care to avoid anything that would look like a parole violation, the need to find his son's killer takes precedence over a transformation to model citizen. As a criminal with considerable experience with and insight into police and their procedures, he investigates, which puts him in the uncomfortable company of police detectives. Richard's commanding officer Captain Levy treats Holman with consideration for his grief but comes to regard him as a nuisance in the official investigation.

Holman's not relying on the boys in blue out of Parker Center. He doesn't buy it when they assume the shooter is a Warren Alberto Juarez who had a personal vendetta with Sgt. Fowler and killed the four officers just to get him. Lying in wait in an area with few hiding places is a theory with more holes than a day-old target.

After interviewing Juarez's wife Maria, Holman is picked up by four cops from Robbery-Homicide, giving him a chance to meet Detective John Random and sidekick Vukovich. They try to learn what Holman knows or suspects but, when they let him go with a warning, he continues his investigation, visiting the crime scene at night for a sense of the physical layout and an emotional meeting with Richard's widow, his daughter-in-law Elizabeth.

Although he obtained wheels and some operating money from his reliable old buddy in crime and now legit businessman, Chee, Holman realizes his need for an investigative connection. In a startling flash of audacity, he thinks of the only person who would be in a position to help. But, what else is there than to appeal to the very officer who caught him and sent him away for a decade? Katherine Pollard is not only the lady FBI agent who took him down-- she recommended leniency at his trial because of a startling thing that Holman had done... and under the precepts of the two-minute rule, ensured his capture.

That rule is not just pervasive in Crais' exemplary and uniquely fulfilling yarn, but is crucial to its complexity and resolution. The master of crime and intrigue has cast a whole new dimension onto the realities of robbing banks--allowing us to consider the risky crime with fresh insight. With his intensely modest hero, a man who isn't as emotionally damaged or otherwise worthless as he thinks he is, the author spins a robust tale that doesn't let us loose from deep concern for a sympathetic human being. Not for a second.

                                                ~~ Jules Brenner