[Lt. Leroy Powder 03] • Late Payments

Lt. Leroy Powder, the abrasive, independent head of the Indianapolis Police Department's Missing Persons Bureau, is divorced from his wife, estranged from his son, disliked by his colleagues and dedicated to his job. That he gets results and has never learned to shy away from publicity only add to the resentment and respect he receives. Life in Missing Persons is never dull and the cases keep coming. Powder's assistant and sometime girlfriend, Sgt. Carollee Fleetwood, has a computer whiz friend Jules Mencelli who claims that, according to his data, someone is silently killing the disabled people of Indiana. And Mencelli is prepared to go to any lengths-legal or illegal-to prove his point. Far more sympathetic is Bobby Sweet, a frightened twelve-year-old boy whose father has disappeared without a trace-and left behind little evidence of a past life. Powder puts his own career on the line by allowing the boy to remain alone in his house, and the investigation leads closer and closer to a different police file, this one involving organized crime and a mobster in analysis. With rapid-fire dialogue, dry humour and plot twists that turn one step ahead of the reader, Late Payments proves again that Leroy Powder is one of the least endearing and most enjoyable police heroes around.