PAR FOUR

Wait till Lt. Jake Hines sees how he’ll have to earn his promotion to Chief of Detectives in Rutherford, Minnesota. The break-in at Rowdy’s Bar looks routine—two would-be burglars surprised owner Babe Krueger (and vice versa) as she was counting the weekend’s take, taped her to a chair, and made off with $28,000—but the sequel is anything but. Item: the robbery may be just the latest in a quietly alarming string of thefts. Item: Babe is hacked to death only hours after Jake interviews her. Item: the two kids who confess to the robbery seem to forget all sorts of important details about it. Item: one of the two is ominously linked to the lowlife who’s just kidnaped little Jessica Schultz, the police dispatcher’s bratty but lovable daughter. And what does the whole mess have to do with a crack epidemic Jake’s detective squad is convinced has arrived in peaceful Rutherford on the wings of Eugene Soames, the fleeing suspect who capped his high-speed chase by plowing into Jake’s brand-new pickup while the Chief of Detectives was celebrating his promotion out on the links? With such a scorching crime wave heating up the town, there’s no time for Jake to deal with the news that his ladylove Trudy Hanson, the state’s photograph-and-fingerprint expert, is pulling up roots to move to San Francisco. Miraculously, Jake hitches up his britches and ties up all the loose ends, making his second appearance (Foul Play, 1997)—except for the unbelievable casting of his archcriminal—a model of the small-town procedural.