Tequila Mockingbird

""I love a man who knows how to flog a dead metaphor,"" says LAPD detective Fey Croaker in her first hardcover appearance (after paperback originals Twice Dead and Kill Me Again). So, apparently, does Bishop, himself a veteran L.A. cop who currently heads the Sex Crimes Investigation unit in West Los Angeles. There's a crippled cliche and/or a flogged metaphor on virtually every page of this story about high-level police treachery. But if you can tune out these verbal gnats, Bishop's inside knowledge should carry you along. When an officer attached to the department's elite antiterrorist unit is shot in the head by his very pregnant wife outside the West Los Angeles station, Croaker is put in charge of the investigation. It turns out that the cop was already dead, thanks to a massive dose of heart medication added to his water bottle. Croaker and her colorful team of associates uncover a nasty feud involving the embattled chief of police--clearly modeled on L.A.'s real-life just-departed Willie Williams--and his top deputy. There's also a ring of Mexican drug heirs called Los Juniors who operate from places like the UCLA campus, where one of the dead cop's ""mockingbirds"" (deep-cover agents) is found dead. Croaker and team are forced to take sides, and the danger this places them in is made believable by Bishop's shrewd observations about the shifting sands of police power. (Nov.)