Lesser Evils

Flanagan’s highly impressive debut transposes the corrupt world of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential to the Cape Cod of 1957. Trouble appears for Lt. Bill Warren, a single father who oversees the police force in Barnstable, in the form of Capt. Dale Stasiak of the Massachusetts State Police, a crew-cut giant of a man who has been assigned to look into the disappearance of a young boy in Truro. Stasiak makes no bones about annexing the case from the local police, with the grudging support of district attorney Elliott Yost. When Warren learns of Stasiak’s bigfooting, he takes it as a personal insult. Why is Stasiak resisting Warren’s efforts to investigate a gambling and loan-shark ring that seems to have spread its tentacles Cape-wide? Why, when the corpses of other young boys are discovered near surrounding towns, isn’t Stasiak alarmed that a serial killer may be running loose? And how does disgraced Father Boyle fit into the picture? Flanagan ratchets up the suspense to an almost unbearable level, and the climactic face-off between Warren and the monstrous Stasiak is an instant classic. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Mar.)