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Rating: 
Summary: filmmaker takes on cop murder
Review: Making her fourth appearance, Maggie MacGowan, documentary filmmaker, lands a network contract to explore the 20 year-old murder of L.A.P.D. officer Roy Frady, an unsolved case.There are plenty of suspects. Hard-drinking, womanizing, bad-boy member of the 77th Street Station's Four Horsemen or "Whoresmen," Frady was making time with a cop buddy's girlfriend and making enemies among the street gangs he was rousting. Then there's the house where his body was found - a few blocks from the hideout where the Symbionese Liberation Front was holding Patty Hearst. And there's his ex-wife and a maniac cop-killer who was stalking his beat at the time. Wisecracking MacGowan plunges into the crumbling neighborhood with her crew (who reveal plenty of private agendas of their own), digging up secrets and setting events in motion that lead to more murders and headlines, much to the network's delight. MacGowan favors the SLA as culprits but tawdry personal motives keep getting in the way. Complicating the story are: MacGowan's lover, LAPD detective Mike Flint, an old partner of Frady's; MacGowan's teenage daughter, away from home for the first time, and her sister, vegetating in a coma. Even if her characters, including the old women, have a rather tiresome penchant for raunchy banter, Hornsby mixes it all up nicely, showing a deft touch with thorny issues like trust and infidelity and right-to-die decisions without ever losing a beat in her complex plot.
Rating:
Summary: One of the better Maggie MacGowan books
Review: The characters in Wendy Hornsby's Maggie MacGowan books are well-developed and complex, and the relationships between them are fascinating, complicated, and maturely adult. I thought this was one of the better Maggie books, with an intricate and interesting plot. Wendy Hornsby has a real gift for creating characters, and she obviously has a vivid imagination as well.
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