SOUTHERN CROSS

This new suspense from Cornwell, set in Richmond, Virginia, is not a Kay Scarpetta mystery, though a few of its major characters were introduced in the Scarpetta series. Hammer, the new female chief of police, has been hired to straighten out the department, and she's brought along some of her best colleagues from their former department. Amid the antagonism of the police force towards the outsiders, cases are being sabotaged at every turn. McMurdo-Wallis is superb at voicing each character in a book peopled with everything from psychopaths to society ladies. She calls up an entire repertoire of Southern accents to fit each individual, whether "cracker" or politico. Wisely, she lets the writing convey the drama and tension, and there's plenty of both; anything more would have resulted in melodrama, which would have been a shame. S.S.R. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]