Page 45 Review by Stephen
Precinct procedural crime from the creators of LAZARUS and the writer of CRIMINAL etc, this is for me the finest DC Universe series of all time.
Rooted firmly in the trenches, this is about how ordinary cops - albeit from Gotham's Major Crimes Unit - cope with living in a city infested enough with maladjusted meta-dudes to keep Batman in multiple titles a month. How does it feel to know that you cannot look after your own, that a vigilante ends up having to do your job for you: that you to fire up that bloody Bat Signal every five minutes in what amounts to an admission of inadequacy?
It is emasculating.
Michael Lark does for this book what Sean Phillip does for CRIMINA, KILL OR BE KILLED etc: he anchors the action firmly in its street-level environment, replete with its own uncomfortable atmosphere.
Superb characterisation, underplayed dialogue, deft timing, and a convincingly uneasy relationship with the Bat ensure that you will care about each and every individual. Evening meals that seem inconsequential will tell you more than you know about what to expect from whom, now or later on.
In early chapters Detective Renée Montoya is being stalked by Marty Lipari, who got off on an easy rape case because the evidence 'went missing'. Hell, he's even suing her for damages to the tune of ten million dollars, and he's hired a Private Eye to take photographs. Now the Private Eye is dead, Lipari is missing, and the photographs have found their way onto the precinct walls and beyond. Soon Lipari will be dead. Sure it's a set-up, but why? And how much worse is Renée's life going to get before she even begins to understand the trouble she's in?
There's a wider subplot involving the misappropriation of forensic evidence which will go on to entrap Renée's partner, Detective Crispus Allen, and it strikes me now as I condense this from former reviews that, like so much modern crime fiction, this is a big book of injustice.
Compact Edition contains #1-10, the Omnibus h/c contains the whole shebang, #1-40
