POWERS OF ARREST

A brave cop finds the kind of courage he didn’t know he had.

No one who’s ever served with Will Borders doubts that he’s a stand-up guy. The son of a hero policeman killed in the line of duty, Will has the right stuff in his DNA, glittering commendations on his personnel jacket, and unswerving momentum in his climb from street cop to detective in the much respected Cincinnati Homicide division. He’s an authentic highflier until suddenly he becomes one of those forced to consider “the senseless, incomprehensible ways our bodies could go wrong.” A tumor on his spinal cord requires complex surgery from which it takes months to recover. Now Will needs a cane to walk—the stand-up guy can’t stand very long without recourse to pain pills—and he isn’t a homicide detective any longer, for his bosses have shifted him to work that is more commensurate with his so-called handicap. Still, he’s glad to be alive. Digging deep, he finds in himself another kind of courage sufficient to fend off lurking depression while he awaits a chance to prove that a cop with a cane can catch a murderer with the spryest of them. And then a vicious serial killer makes a crucial mistake. He singles Will out for special attention.

Talton (Deadline Man, 2010, etc.) crafts a solid mystery while telling the engrossing, sometimes poignant story of a cop with a cane who refuses to be pigeonholed.