Homicide

Sasser's milieu of homicidal perverts, rotting corpses and misunderstood cops handcuffed by a bleeding-heart liberal establishment is nothing new to fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. This volume , however, is no novel but an account of the author's years as a Tulsa, Okla., homicide detective, loosely structured around his obsession with solving the grisly serial murders of three young women, dubbed the ``Jekyll-and-Hyde'' case by the local newspaper. Although these particular murders are never solved, Sasser--who casts himself as a combination Columbo (his nickname) and Dirty Harry (the phrase ``make my day'' appears more than once)--seems to have enjoyed more successes than failures, and he recounts the former in a lively, literate style. He also displays an exaggerated machismo and a manifest contempt for women and homosexuals. Nevertheless, Sasser (coauthor of The Walking Dead: A Marine's Story of Vietnam ) offers a grim, authentic window to a world of horrors only hinted at in the tabloid headlines, and gives us a personal look at the triumphs and frustrations of those we pay to face those horrors every working day. (Sept.)