Murder Inside the Beltway

September 22, 2008
In the workmanlike 24th and presumably last Capital Crimes novel (after Murder on K Street
) from bestseller Truman (1924–2008), the murder of escort Rosalie Curzon, who was savagely beaten before being strangled, panics her many high-powered clients after the local police find she'd been videotaping her sessions. The detectives on the case—Walter Hatcher, a racist dinosaur mulling over retirement, and his two younger assistants, naïve Matt Jackson, who's shocked that some of his colleagues are on the take, and Mary Hall, who's secretly involved with Jackson—are walking clichés. The probe takes on national implications when rumors circulate that presidential challenger Robert Colgate, who's been dogged by allegations of infidelity, was one of Curzon's clients. Readers should be prepared for some clunky prose (e.g., a character's face is described as “a series of small, finely chiseled granite blocks covered by a coal-black membrane pulled tight”).