An Eye for an Eye

Expecting drug dealer Gary Mokley to surrender quietly, a SWAT team rams the door to his apartment in Hollywood and sets off a bomb that kills two cops and injures others. Left with one eye useless and the other seriously impaired, Bob Odin is driven by the need to make Mokley pay for his crimes. Odin's monomania shapes events in Schorr's thriller but in no way limits the action when the policeman, retired from the LAPD, plays nemesis on his own. Jan Golden, a nurse as starchy as her cap but opposed to violence, cares for Odin and tries in vain to make him give up the search, although she does persuade him to take classes in self-defense. The lessons come in handy when Odin clashes with mobsters and their bought protectors in the police hierarchy. As the basic of a suspenseful entertainment, the ingredients are serviceable but nearly drown in an ocean of irrelevancies. The author seems compelled to make his story teach all about arcane medical terminology, guns, Taoism, karate, sexual acrobatics and interminable other subjects. He even tells about the hero distracting a shotgun wielder by tossing a ``spy novel by Scott Ellis'' at her: a bit of PR for stories he writes under that pen name. (Oct.)