Without Warning

Rosenfelt’s latest hapless hero, Jake Robbins, is the police chief of Wilton, Maine, a job that becomes considerably more difficult after a powerful hurricane and flood unearth the town’s 50-year time capsule about 46 years prematurely. It was put in the ground several months before Jake’s wife, Jenny, was murdered. Inside, Jake finds are skeletal remains and a set of predictions about future crimes that accurately describes Jenny’s death along with several other murders. Narrator Steitzer, who has recorded several of Rosenfelt’s recent novels, uses a strong, resonant voice for the stalwart Jake. The police chief narrates much of the book, starting out casually and naturally, but becoming more emotional as the mysterious killer tightens the frame. Steitzer takes an appropriately more detached approach to the objective chapters. The men who work for Jake speak in different shades of gruff. The unsympathetic mayor sounds like the boisterous phony the author describes. Reporter Matt Higgins is aggressively ambitious. The result is a entertaining whodunit. A Minotaur hardcover. (Apr.)