Cold Case
By Robin Burcell

      The roles for women in mysteries improve. Perhaps Northern California police officer Robin Burcell gets insight from being on the job every day, and the result shows in her police procedural about SFPD Homicide Investigator Kate Gillespie, who’s got a Katharine Hepburn attitude. She has a sense of justice akin to Camellia “Mel” Walker, PI, the heroine of another excellent police procedural, The Cop was White as Snow, which sparked the Harbour Point Mystery Series based on the real-life cases worked by retired PI Joyce Spizer. We are women, hear us roar…we’re packing, too!

      The only thing Kate seems to fear is commitment, even though FBI agent and ex-cop Mike Torrance is her number one suspect in the theft of her heart. Life is rarely tidy, even in fiction, and crime is even messier. When Kate links the murder of a prostitute in a seedy motel to mob boss Nick Paolini, her discovery leads to the murder of Darwin Award candidate Earl Millhouse during a bank robbery three years later. Since Kate is nearly killed in the riveting opening at the seedy motel, she’s eager to solve the crime. Forget about red herrings. Robin Burcell gives us red wigs, transvestites, white roses, and a web of personalities whose relationships and motives are more difficult to comprehend than US intelligence reports on Iraq. Burcell makes the perhaps unintended point that this isn’t “Murder, She Wrote,” and murder rarely fits a pre-arranged formula, because life doesn’t. Certainly Kate Gillespie’s life gets complicated by the attentions of her undercover assignment, Nick Paolini, who is Tony Soprano, only smoother. We feel the lure of Paolini but hope for Kate to get her love together with Mike Torrance, along with a little help from Torrance’s Spock-like female partner Jackie Parrish…but in the end, Kate and Torrance bring the sweet mystery of life to a great conclusion.

       Sassy dialogue such as a line about Jackie needing a tight body suit (“That’s what all the good-looking aliens wear on ‘Star Trek’”) make this Cold Case a hot read that women in uniform and their civilian sisters can cheer.