The Heroin Factor

Though it starts off with a couple of hoary old clich s, McEachin's offbeat but never off-kilter thriller eschews conventional action-suspense resolutions. There's a ""no love lost"" subplot between cranky L.A. narcotics lieutenant Wyatt McKnight and equally crusty Chief Herman Ault, who assigns McKnight to investigate the murder of fellow officer Verneau LeCoultre, a drug addict who's found shot to death after apparently being mauled by a dog. A ""new partner"" subplot blooms when Ault teams McKnight with a German policeman visiting L.A. to observe U.S. police methods. The two detectives quickly discover that LeCoultre's girlfriend, Angie, worked as a distributor for eccentric Leslie Van Horn, a British woman who suffers from a psychotic disorder and makes pure heroin from poppies grown on her own farm to distribute to the homeless. While locating Van Horn is relatively easy, the arrest is anything but. There are disastrous complications for McKnight's search, including violent bouts with a madwoman, a near-fatal gunshot wound, amnesia and a year of medical leave for recuperation before McKnight can track Van Horn to Bath, England. There he meets her deranged and dangerous family, and the showdown is a grisly one. McEachin's (Farewell to the Mockingbirds) third novel is not so much a mystery-thriller as an unusual, nearly unresolvable case history. As a result, the climax hinges not on the apprehension of a killer, but a search for answers, and ultimately a mutual redemption between cop and criminal, who share more than just a crime between them. It's not the story one might expect from the first few pages, but McEachin's strange twists make it a palpable, addictive one. (July)