ROLLER-COASTER

A full plate for Patrick Petrella (Young Petrella, 1988—not reviewed), now kicked upstairs to Superintendent of the East London dockyards. The Farm Boys, a dockside gang who killed the last police spy set on them, are planning to hijack a local truck carrying a fat cash haul. A pair of matrons who took 40 local boys on an unforgettable trip to Amsterdam set him on the trail of a smart, brutal kiddie-porn/blackmail racket with roots uncomfortably close to home. And Sergeant Dod Stark, already under fire by the Sentinel for his alleged violence against West Indians, comes on the carpet with a vengeance when Sentinel freelancer Philip Poston-Pirrie is fished out of the river. Maybe a little too much of a good thing: Petrella can't walk into a pub without being threatened with compromising photos. But every subplot here is fleshed out with the dispassionate detail that lifts this third of a series above its obvious model, John Creasey's Gideon books.