Crisscross - Softcover

Fast-moving police procedural set in political Washington, D.C., with two reluctant and incompatible homicide detectives becoming entangled in the nether world of abortion clinic bombers, radical plotters, bank scam artists and a host of other subterranean miscreants, all drawn to the nation's capital. Central to the tale is a mysterious wrought-iron swastika discovered by the detectives after the estranged wife of a Democratic congressman turns up dead. What, if anything, is its significance? The tale takes the reader from the grit and grime of Washington's streets to the wilds of West Virginia and back, as the two mismatched detectives attempt to reconcile their deep differences and solve a murder at the same time.

Paul W. Valentine, a retired reporter for The Washington Post, spent 33 years covering police, courts, prisons, and radical politics in the nation's capital, and another five years before that covering the civil rights movement in the deep South for the Atlanta Journal and Columbia (S.C.) Record. He published his first novel, Crime Scene at 'O' Street, in 1989. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Elizabeth.