Nightwatch: An Inspector ""Jacko"" Jackson Mystery

Finally identified after six months, an exhumed skeleton sets East Midlands DI ``Jacko'' Jackson peeking into closets--some awkwardly close to home--that contain their own. The victim, Dwight Curtis, an American writer living in Amsterdam, could have been his own best story: he juiced up old, real murders for pulp magazines. On a quick trip to the Netherlands, where he receives the invaluable assistance of Sergeant Fran Van Acrie, Jacko learns that Curtis was in England to confront a WWII labor-camp doctor--and that Curtis's original informant has vanished. As the trail leads to two British hangings, one old (an execution) and one new (supposedly suicide), Jacko casts a suspicious eye at a superior who was originally on the case and who now wants the skeleton back. But what particularly worries Jacko and Fran, who's been brought in to help, is that the doctor Curtis was investigating might be in the Midlands and up to his old experimental tricks. Besides delivering an intense, tightly woven police procedural, Palmer (Blood Brother) raises questions about what happens when theoretical liberalism is tested. Such questions sharpen the edge of an already effective story. (Aug.)