Irish Eyes

Atlanta PI and former police officer Callahan Garrity displays her usual pluck in the eighth outing of this warm-hearted series. On the way home from a St. Patrick's Day party, Garrity and Bucky Deavers, her partner on the robbery squad from her days on the force, stumble on a liquor store holdup. Bucky is shot in the head while a key witness, the liquor store cashier, flees the scene with her screaming baby. Garrity has her work cut out for her. Bucky, like many underpaid cops, has been moonlighting--as a security guard for the owner of the store where the robbery took place--and the police suspect him of having been involved in the crime. To clear her former partner, who lies close to death in the hospital, and to locate the missing witness, Garrity enlists the aid of the Shamrock Society, whose members include ex-cops from the Atlanta neighborhood where she grew up; she also calls upon two elderly sisters who work for House Mouse, the cleaning business Garrity runs to pay the rent. After another cop is shot, Garrity begins to suspect that something is rotten at the Atlanta P.D. Meanwhile, her current love, Mac MacAuliffe, is contemplating a job offer in Nashville. Trocheck skillfully blends family, generational, ethnic, racial, medical and criminal conflicts into her Irish stew. Her Garrity is an appealing heroine, hard-working and principled, while Bucky is just one of many well-drawn members of the community of family and friends for whom she gives her all in this satisfying tale. (Mar.)