Hard Line Author:Michael Z. Lewin Lt. Leroy Powder of the Indianapolis Police Department is back again, this time in charge of the Missing Persons Bureau. A Walter Matthau-like character on a bad day, Powder is dedicated, demanding, abrasive, and insulting, capable of telling a woman in a wheelchair, "You look tire, Why don't you take a load off your feet?" — the woman in questi... more »on is Sergeant Carollee Fleetwood, wounded in the line of duty, to whom the department has given the choice of retirement or working with Powder. An in Carollee, Powder meets his match, a person who is able to give as good as she gets, as tough, rigorous, and conscientious as he is. If the core of Hard Line is their developing relationship, around this core swirl at least half a dozen cases whose complexities and dangers are often deceptively disguised.
In rapid-fire succession come a young woman claiming amnesia who has tried to commit suicide in an alleyway; the blandest of husbands, whose wife has vanished; a room-house transient with the habit of disappearing and taking the television with him; the niece who never got off the bus form St. Paul; strange doings in Powder's own neighborhood of Lockerbie Square; the Monday morning caller of years' standing, always asking whether his sister has been found; and, most disturbing of all, the sudden affluence of Powder's own grown son, Ricky, whose spending far exceeds any visible income.« less