This is one of Gideon's multilinear dossiers: he must cope with power failures occurring with alarming frequency; with the childnapping of a little girl whose father shoots her abductor while her mother chooses an easier death; with a wrongly convicted man--in Dartmoor; with the murder of a night Watchman; and other assorted acts of violence. Gideon's as stalwart and sterling as ever which is part of the comforting security of this series.