Thief Taker

This second entry in a promising English procedural series weaves a beguiling tapestry of evil but less clearly portrays its pair of heroes, London coppers Leo Silver and George Macrae. A nasty self-made shipping tycoon dies after a thin, high-heeled blonde, soon revealed as a high-priced hooker, is seen fleeing his flat. On the lower end of the skin trade, a man with a Veronica Lake hairdo calls a phone-sex line and brags about a double murder he seems to be planning. His hair hides the scars from a confrontation with Silver that had nearly taken the life of the young, educated policeman's girlfriend. The widow of the dead tycoon is discovered to have a penchant for working-class men, while his daughter has withdrawn to the woods outside London, where she lives in world of psychotic fantasy. While Scholefield ( Dirty Weekend ) cleverly gathers in his subplots, he never quite gets the measure of his two coppers--suave, young, educated Silver and tough, stressed, oft-married Macrae, who with tending could become as indelible a series figure as Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse or Ruth Rendell's Wexford. (Sept.)