Red Light by T. Jefferson Parker

Merci Rayborn is a police sergeant assigned to the Homicide Detail with the California Orange County Sheriff Department. She is coming from some recent tragedies including the death of her lover and the father of her 18-month-old son, and it was a mistake she made that led to his death. Merci is saturated with guilt but must find a way to carry on. Like most cops in real life, she is averse to actually seeking professional help for her angst. Merci is thankful that she has her own father (a retired cop) to move in with her and help her with childcare while she returns to work where she is thrown into both a 32-year-old cold case and a current one. Both cases involved the death of a prostitute and both cases seem to point towards dirty cops being involved in the deaths. Patti Bailey was killed in 1969 and Aubrey Whittaker was the recent murder victim in 2000. In the time since the death of her lover, Merci became reluctantly and distantly involved with a new man, Mike McNally, who is also a sergeant with the Sheriff Department. Somehow the cases tie together and point toward McNally as having been sexually involved with and the killer of with Whittaker. Her father might have had some knowledge about the death of Bailey. Parker weaves the stories together in an effective way.

This is the eighth book by Parker that I’ve reviewed for the blog, and I know I read one or two of his novels pre-blog. He’s written 20 novels since 1985. This book is the second of this three-book series about Rayborn, originally written in 2000 and then revised it in 2013. Some of Parker's books have been solid crime novels, others not so good. I’d put this one in the category of “airplane books,” a story that might keep you entertained but one that would not interfere with a nap during a cross country flight.