Chris Grabenstein Tilt a Whirl

Tilt a Whirl

Chris Grabenstein

Carroll & Graf, Sep 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 0786715847

After leaving the military, former MP John Ceepak relocates in the summer resort town of Sea Haven, where he becomes the full time cop. He eats and sleeps law enforcement even when off the job, as he studies anything and everything he can find related to the subject. He is currently assisted by summer cop, twenty-four years old Danny Boyle, who hopes to pick up the visiting college females due to his uniform.

Except for a love of the Boss (Springsteen not Steinbrenner), these two officers share nothing else. That abruptly changes when someone knifes to death Realtor Reginald Hart, meeting his daughter Ashley at the TILT-A-WHIRL in the nearby rundown amusement park. Ashley blames druggie Squeegee, but working as a team for the first time, John and Danny investigate the homicide, which begins to take them elsewhere.

TILT A WHIRL is a fabulous police procedural in which the murder investigation that seems solved before the cops even start, brings the two law enforcement officials, so different in attitude and life goals, together. A special camaraderie forms as the professional Ceepak and the semi-amateur Boyle (whose only claim to semi is he does get paid), work a case that whirls away from the obvious into the opposite side of the tracks. Like the two police officers, readers will wonder who is telling the truth and what the motive for deception is.