ABUSE OF POWER

FICTION:  ABUSE OF POWER/Nancy Taylor Rosenberg – Penguin/Signet – 1997

If your passion is stories about dirty cops and whistleblowers, this is the book for you.  This engaging and well-told yarn involves an inexperienced female patrol officer with personal vulnerabilities and challenges, working the graveyard shift of the Oak Grove, California P.D.  Working two jobs to support her two children, the 34-year-old widow is perpetually exhausted.

A vivid picture of her fellow officers is painted as Rachel Simmons starts to discover what goes on behind the cops’ blue wall of silence.  She finds that the handsome and personable Grant Cummings is the ringleader of a clique of officers and one seargent who has a free hand in what seems like a precinct gone wild.  She finds that Cummings operates through manipulation, first seemingly going to great lengths to keep his little group from facing discipline and then lining them up for his payback.

After a difficult situation at a convenience store robbery, Rachel has made mistakes.  Cummings shows up and saves her hide.  This gives him a bargaining chip.  He has been after her for some time to come to the weekly watch party held the morning after a shift.  This is held on a deserted beach.  Rachel fends off the invitation until Cummings says she ‘owes’ him.  She complies reluctantly and later finds Cummings on top of her as the other men stand around laughing.  She fears she’s been drugged and raped by one or more of the men.

This brings back her childhood trauma of being kidnapped by a pedophile at age 10 and the nightmares come flooding back.  When she tries to speak out about the drunken assault on the beach she is threatened and discredited.  The more impropriety and illegality she encounters, the worse the threats get.

Rosenberg gives us a couple of memorable characters:  Jimmy Townsend is a very overweight, slovenly cop with an eating disorder and family problems, and Fred “Ratso” Ramon is painted as a strange, timid but violent young man whose ethnicity is unknown.  He is a personal slave to Cummings.  The ringleader is  vile, corrupt and dangerous.  His minions, who are beholden to him, are at his beck and call.

Rachel is set up as the shooter of Cummings in the locker room.  She seems to have means, motive and opportunity.  No one will take her seriously and finds herself in jail.  With the help of her sister, an attorney, she attempts to clear her name and prove her allegations against the unholy alliance.

This book was surprisingly good, with a very surprising ending.