Book 51: Dead Sky by Tami Hoag
Book 51: Dead Sky (Kovac/Liska #3).
Author: Tami Hoag, 2006.
Genre: Police Procedural. Crime Fiction.
Other Details: Paperback. 416 pages.
It was a crime so brutal it changed the lives of even the most hardened homicide cops. The Haas family murders left a scar on the community nothing can erase, but convicting the alleged killer, Karl Dahl, is a start. Only Judge Carey Moore seems to be standing in the way. Her ruling that Dahl's prior criminal record is inadmissible as evidence against him raises a public outcry - and puts the judge in grave danger. When an unknown assailant attacks Carey Moore in a parking garage, Detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are called in to investigate and keep the judge from further harm. Then Karl Dahl escapes custody, and the judge is kidnapped from her home even as the police sit outside watching her house. With no time to spare, the detectives are pulled down a strange dark trail of smoke and mirrors, where no one is who they seem, and everyone is guilty of something. - synopsis from UK publisher's website.
Published in the US as Prior Bad Acts, this is the third outing for Detectives Kovac and Nikki Liska and again this proved a solid police procedural with plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing to the final pages. I do feel in this case the US title was more apt than the UK one as it referred to the main issue in the case, which was whether or not Dahl's former crimes would form part of the prosecution's case. Having sat on a jury where the prior history of the defendant was kept from us until after the verdict was in, I did feel that there was a great deal of over reaction on the part of a number of characters, especially towards the judge who had ruled. Is this not a standard kind of ruling in the USA? Also, the fact the ruling was made so public via the media seemed odd in terms of trial procedure.
Anyway, I was very much in the mood for this kind of crime fiction in which I could just lose myself for a few hours and Hoag provided that even with the above plot issues.