Rizzo's Fire

Manfredo's prosaic second novel featuring Brooklyn Det. Sgt. Joe Rizzo (after Rizzo's War) gets off to a slow start. Rizzo, a battle-hardened veteran nearing retirement with a zen approach to his work ("It's not right, it's not wrong. It just is"), has a new detective partner, Priscilla Jackson, a lesbian African-American. Many chapters of routine police work and soap opera (Jackson's estranged from her mother, who cut her off over her sexual preference, while one of Rizzo's daughters wants to join the force against his wishes) pass before the pair start investigating the strangling homicide of ex-shoe clerk Robert Lauria. Lauria's death may be connected with a similar killing of a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, though oddly the police don't run the NYPD computer to check for similar murders. A less than gripping whodunit plot doesn't help. Fans of contemporary New York City crime fiction will find Reggie Nadelson's Artie Cohen series (Blood Count, etc.) more realistic. (Mar.)