Clean Cut

August 4, 2008
In La Plante’s solid third police procedural to feature London Det. Insp. Anna Travis (after 2007’s The Red Dahlia
), Anna’s lover and superior, Det. Chief Insp. Jimmy Langton, is knifed while investigating the murder of a young prostitute. As Anna helps him recuperate, Jimmy becomes obsessed with catching his assailant, rumored to be Clinton Camorra, a notorious drug trafficker and voodoo practitioner. Anna discovers another link to Camorra’s gang of illegal immigrants in one of her own murder cases, the apparently motiveless killing of a woman by Arthur George Murphy, who also practices voodoo. After Arthur’s sister and niece are murdered and another niece and nephew disappear, Anna suspects that not only is Camorra behind the crimes but that she may be the next target. Though her stance on illegal immigration is sometimes too strident for the story to support, La Plante has created another damaged heroine almost as appealing as her inimitable Jane Tennison.