Internal Affairs

Dial, a former LAPD Hollywood Division commanding officer, puts 27 years of experience and a lot of heart into her gritty, sporadically powerful debut. Sgt. Mike Turner, a principled cop working in Internal Affairs, thinks he's lost his fire for the job as he begins to investigate the sensitive case of a female officer found stabbed to death in a police car parked in a deputy chief's driveway. Turner enters a maelstrom of “incompetence, indiscriminate sex, and major backstabbing” among his colleagues, most jockeying for promotion, like his live-in lover, Lt. Paula Toscano. Like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Turner walks L.A.'s mean streets as a man of honor, doing the right thing in an organization that “rewards the weak and destroys the strong.” Awkward point-of-view shifts, stereotypical minor characters and a tendency to overdo perversions mark this as an apprentice work, but Dial's realistic, often poignant portrayal of police work make her a crime writer to watch. (June)