Silent Witness: A Sam Kincaid Mystery

In Norman's solid sequel to his well-received debut, The Commission (2007), cops Sam Kincaid and Kate McConnell try to unsnarl a tangle of crimes in Salt Lake City. First, Kate investigates the brutal murder of one witness to a botched armored car robbery, followed by the disappearance of the other witness. Then Sam, head of \x93a unit within the Utah Department of Corrections called the Special Investigations Branch,\x94 gets involved because the gang's mastermind is \x93prophet\x94 Walter Bradshaw, a fanatical Mormon polygamist currently awaiting trial for the armored car holdup. Meanwhile, Sam has to cope with a new, excessively by-the-book boss and a lawsuit from his ex-wife seeking custody of their daughter. As personal and bureaucratic tensions almost sidetrack the investigators, Sam and Kate have to prove how smart and stubborn they are. Norman isn't an especially slick author, but he has a good grasp of police procedure and writes with the same dogged, decent persistence that Sam displays. (May)