Bait: A Crime Novel

First-time novelist Songer, a former Glendale, Calif., law officer, develops her convoluted, often enticing tale in a series of interwoven plots told in repetitive phrases and partial sentences, an elliptical style slightly reminiscent of James Ellroy's. The narrator, ex-cop Meg Gillis, gradually unravels the story, repeatedly speculating and recapitulating, revealing a little more of the background and the key events each time. When Meg takes a phone call for Mike Johnson, another ex-policeman and her partner in a security business, she's immediately caught up in several simultaneous police investigations involving possible corruption in the Beverly Hills Special Tactics Unit, harassment of Iranians living in Southern California, drug traffickers, her missing partner Mike's dealings and the still unsolved shooting of her own husband, also a cop, three years earlier. Meg spends a lot of time traveling from her office to her home or the Burbank police station. Although many of the scenes are physically static, the dialogue creates emotional electricity among the characters; the occasional action scenes are fast-paced and visceral. Songer has a gripping story to tell, but the choppy, circular style she has chosen can be aggravating. It all makes sense in the end, but getting there is often as annoyingly bumpy as it is compelling. (Aug.)