THRESHOLD

A beleaguered big-city cop works with and against an equally troubled young woman with the uncanny ability to help long-comatose patients return to life.

Given Grace Pressman’s miraculous powers, you’d think families of hopeless cases would be falling all over themselves to get her help. And a look at her history indicates that many of them have done exactly that. But in order to revive Joseph Reeves from the coma he’s been in for nearly a year, she has to fight off first the SWAT team surrounding his room with the help of his father, Paul, and then Paul’s ex-wife, Roberta, who’s so incensed by the resurrection that she goes tooth and nail for the spectral Grace, the Silver Angel who suffers from albinism. Grace’s path crosses that of DS Mickey Dolan, just back on the job after his wife very publicly deserted him for a female TV newscaster, when he’s assigned the job of recovering Maddie and Tessa Royster from their bipolar mother, Cassie, who’s spirited them away from her ex-husband, Edwin. It doesn’t take long for Mickey to decide that although he may be a powerful city councilman, Edwin Royster is also an abusive molester. So he has very mixed feelings when he realizes that Grace Pressman, whose mother, Eve, founded the Women’s Transitional Center, probably knows where the little Royster girls are. The revelations that follow have a decisive force that makes it clear why Ford didn’t call on one of his series regulars, Leo Waterman or Frank Corso (Nameless Night, 2008, etc.), for this particular job.

If you can accept the hook of Grace’s extraordinary powers, Ford strings the rest of the tale expertly between extended chases and moments of unexpected compassion the characters show each other and eventually themselves.