Fallen Angels opens with a powerful scene.  Captain Josie Corsino with the Los Angeles Police Department is at a homicide scene, looking at the face of the victim, a young actress.  As the investigation starts, it promises to be as difficult as it is dangerous to Josie’s career.  Many powerful people seem to be involved in this murder, and they are motivated to derail her investigation.

Ms. Dial’s writing is precise, efficient, and straightforward. This police procedural is not only about finding who did it and their motives, but it offers deep insights in the internal politics of the LAPD Hollywood Division, the life of Josie, her difficult relationship with her husband and her son.  Ms. Dial, a 27-year veteran of the LAPD has first-hand experience in investigations.  Her dialogue is sharp, her descriptions are brilliant and the storyline flows quite well.  It reminded me of Michael Connelly’s work, but without all the grit and the gloom that are his trademark.

As the investigation moves forward, Josie discovered disturbing truths about her subordinates, her husband, and her son.  Political pressure from both inside and outside her police department is interfering with her investigation, which may cost her more than just her career.  The closer she gets to the perpetrators, the wider the circle of homicides.

How far with Josie go to find the truth and to discover the people responsible for these homicides?  What impact will this have on her career and her family?  What is the true cost of police officers protecting the citizens?

First, a minor Hollywood starlet is killed; then, the body of the girl’s agent turns up. As Josie proceeds, she learns that the actress was involved with a prominent councilman’s drug addicted son and that the boy’s father was a close friend and mentor of her superior, Deputy Chief Eric Bright. The Deputy Chief is not respected by those he supervises and he does not like Josie. To add personal concern to her professional duties, Josie discovers that her young son, David, an aspiring musician, is somehow connected to both the dead girl and the councilman’s son. Until she can find out how and to what extent David is involved in the murders, she feels she must shield him. Then her estranged husband’s business card turns up among the dead girl’s belongings. Thus, she finds herself in a professional situation that is political as well as personal and she must carry on with the nagging fear that members of her own family might become implicated.

Josie’s division is teeming with well-drawn complex and colorful characters. There are officers in various ranks from adjutants to chiefs deftly drawn with unique personalities. Also, there are the usual assortment of underworld pimps, addicts and hit men with whom the police come in contact. On the force, Josie has two well seasoned colleagues to aid her. Much married and hard drinking Detective Red Behan is her friend and confidant. For ten years she has respected him as the best detective in Hollywood. She values his loyalty and, as Captain, protects him when he exceeds his bounds. Her other colleague is Lieutenant Marge Bailey, in charge of the biggest vice unit in Los Angeles. A highly competent officer, she is thirtyish, tall blond, gorgeous, exceedingly foul-mouthed and is Josie’s only female friend on the police force. Throughout the story, Josie relies on these two colleagues to find out who killed the starlet and her agent and why. As Josie proceeds, she finds herself in the midst of a web of connections where cops and criminals are sometimes unexpectedly on the same side of the fence and the highest officials are compromised.

Connie Dial takes the reader into a world where police business is handled at its highest level. Josie Corsino is a seasoned professional who knows every aspect of her job including its political ramifications She works long, hard, unglamorous hours, drinks too much, carries a gun at all times and uses it when necessary and is far from being a dutiful wife. In these and other ways, she is a certain kind of modern, mature woman. Josie may not be everyone’s cup of tea but she is realistic, and readers will be able to recognize parts of themselves in her.

Ms. Dial writes with the authority that comes from 27 years on this police force, and she brings the viewpoint of both female cop and newly promoted captain to the story through the voice of her main character, Josie Corsino.

Josie gets stuck in the miserable position of not being able to trust her own officers when two related murders point toward involvement of her higher-ups, her staff—and her family.

Fortunately, two of her colleagues are reliable: a brilliant detective who drinks too much (and marries too often), and a fashion-model-gorgeous vice supervisor with a garbage mouth. This team digs out the truth from multiple sources while Josie dodges literal and political bullets.

As Ms. Dial puts it: “Every decision Josie made as the commanding officer of the Hollywood station was potentially explosive in a city full of unmarked special-interest landmines. The chief of police, police commission, her bureau, the diverse community, the ACLU, the officers and their union—all their needs and demands kept in perfect balance like a juggler spinning plates. Josie thrived on the work. Her marriage might be in a tailspin and her son a complete mystery to her, but she knew she was good at her job.”

Indeed, Josie is a careful, thinking person with clear priorities and boundaries. Yet she understands that some lines are fuzzy or flexible, and knows when to cross or hold firm. She can make hard decisions fast and accept the consequences. This gets her into trouble with darn near everybody and often leaves her standing alone.

Always conscious of her responsibilities as captain, she must in this case drop back to detective duty and do her own legwork, unofficially, because so many in her division are implicated in the deaths of a B-movie starlet turned junkie, and the starlet’s dubious agent.

Throughout the investigation, Josie remains aware of her moral and legal duties as a cop, at the cost of important relationships and possibly her career. Much of the story covers how her choices affect her colleagues and family, leaving the reader in suspense over how her life, as well as the case, will work out.

This is what gives Fallen Angels its insidious quality. While the story, like most crime novels, is focused on the who-done-it-and-how plotline, each scene has an emotional subtext that seeps into the reader’s heart and mind. It feels like we’re implanted in Josie’s head or riding around on her shoulder, getting an up close and personal view of life as a real captain of a real police force dealing with the dark side of human nature.

The “fallen angels” in this book are not just victims of the Hollywood star machine, but also Los Angeles police officers who have fallen from grace. Josie’s job is to root them out of the force and minimize the damage without getting killed or canned.

She must also keep good people out of danger. The way she holds up under the strain draws our respect and compassion. She lives the motto “protect and serve” with an understated heroism and sensibility that leave the reader hoping this book will be the first of a long series.

“By the time she wrapped up business at Avanti’s, it was too late to make the last couple of clubs. Josie was grateful. She was tired and out of condition for the grind of real police work. There was a time when she could stay up all night booking suspects, change her clothes and go to court the next morning. She still could if she didn’t have to run the whole damn division, but that was another life.”

I thoroughly enjoyed and more importantly appreciated the first two mysteries [Internal Affairs and The Broken Blue Line] written by Connie Dial. As with past novels, Connie Dial exposes corrupt police officers, shady dealings and poor police work. Her vast experience in narcotics, undercover surveillance and Internal Affairs surveillance glows through the pages. It makes the novel much stronger, deeper. Dial knows L.A. and police work rather intimately and it shows throughout this mystery. As soon as I got confused along came a sentence or paragraph to bring things back into focus.

 “It was unheard of in the LAPD’s modern era for an area captain to be involved hands-on in a homicide investigation. She knew that but it didn’t matter. At the moment, Behan was the only subordinate except Marge she completely trusted.”

The case is that of a young starlet found dead in a notorious party house in the Hollywood hills. As detectives begin to work the case connections to the department grow increasingly questionable and compelling. Off-duty officers working closely with the deceased? Drugs, shattered dreams and gritty Los Angeles street life seamlessly mingle.

Dial focuses on a woman as main character, Captain Josie Corsino. Extremely disciplined despite disorder in her personal life, Josie puts all her effort and time into her work. Josie’s son is a not-so-far-successful musician and her husband, a former prosecutor, left to pursue private practice and personal space from their marriage. Many television shows revolve around the concept of accomplished professional women with disastrous personal lives [Ally McBeal, Damages]. Not new but should continue to be addressed, analyzed, discussed and written about. Interestingly Josie doesn’t know who major celebrities are/ doesn’t watch films yet she’s the police captain in Hollywood.

Behind the scenes of a police officer’s life never gets old. Thus mystery/thriller remains a popular genre–Law & Order and CSI remain highly watched television programs not to mention 48 Hours. Dial hits on after-hours, cops’ marriages, working off-duty, office politics and daily minutiae. Fallen Angels unravels in a slow, steady spiral.

When teenage movie star Hillary Dennis is murdered in a Hollywood “party house,” Captain Josie Corsino and her homicide team are tasked with finding her killer. Hillary is a hard-partying seventeen-year-old with a penchant for drugs and alcohol. Leaving the grasp of her overbearing, religious fanatic mother after being discovered, the b-movie star surrounded herself with dubious characters.

As Corsino and her right-hand man Detective Red Behan gather clues in the starlet’s murder, the body of Misty Skylar—Hillary’s agent—is found in a back alley with a gunshot through her mouth. Skylar was one of the attendees at the party house and was one of the potential suspects on the ever-growing list, which now includes several police officers and the son of a well-known city councilman who happens to be her son David’s friend.

The more Corsino digs, she realizes she has very few people she can trust in the department as she connects the chief of police, corrupt cops, and an organized crime boss to the murders. It seems Hillary and Misty had a side business in prostitution and Hillary was keeping a diary with the names of her clients and was using it to blackmail people in high places.

Connie Dial masterfully writes a compelling thriller. She draws on personal experiences, giving the reader a true glimpse into the world of policing and the corruption that is unfortunately a part of the system. She keeps her readers engaged and guessing at the identity of the killer until the reveal.

Meet Capt. Josie Corsino, a good cop. She’s been that for two decades plus, is proud of her achievement, remains passionate about the work, regards it as a high calling and hates bent cops. Unfortunately, she’s about to confront a mess of them. The complex, frequently embittering case that flushes them out begins in the Hollywood hills and centers on the murder of Hillary Dennis, a teenage movie star with connections going every which way: to a powerful, eminently dislikeable city councilman, to his wayward son, to organized crime and, yes, to the upper reaches of the LAPD. As murder follows murder, Josie battles a variety of dubious agendas while trying desperately to protect embattled colleagues, often as not from their own self-destructive behavior. Meanwhile, trouble looms on her domestic front. After 20 years of marriage her husband is suddenly restive. Her beloved, quixotic son who may, incidentally, have been closer to Hillary Dennis than was wise also has issues with her. “You really don’t give an inch, do you?” David says, “You look and talk like other mothers, but you’ve got the heart of a gunnery sergeant.” He’s right, and he’s wrong, which is, of course, part of what makes Josie remarkable.

A veteran cop herself, Dial (The Broken Blue Line, 2010, etc.) does authenticity to the max, and readers will like that. But it’s tough, vulnerable, never-say-die Josie that they’ll love.

Verdict: Dial writes with the knowledge and procedural minutiae of the insider she once was. And she bolsters her novel’s feminist credentials (not to mention the integrity of the storytelling and plot) with another strong realistic female protagonist, Lt. Marge Bailey. Authentic, well paced, and deftly written, this is a great addition to the police procedural crime fiction subgenre.

The guy was dead, and they were still sniveling and sparring with him.  It made me wonder what it was about the Chief that got under their skin so bad that it caused them to lash out at him even as he lay in the funeral home.  After reading their editorials, I had this picture in my mind of Chief Gates sitting in his black and white chariot looking down at Newton and Domanick and laughing his ass off.  Gates was smarter than both of them and had a sense of honor and courage they never valued.  He also had a sense of humor and must be enjoying the idea these guys are still so pissed at him they can’t give him a proper eulogy.

The reason Gates didn’t like Newton should’ve been pretty obvious to most cops.  Newton never understood the police department he wrote about with such sublime arrogance and ignorance.  If Gates “detested” (Newton’s word) The Times, it was because The Times lacked objectivity and intelligent research in covering anything related to the LAPD.  The paper worshiped the likes of Ramona Ripston and her ACLU-laden police commission, but couldn’t stomach the concept of giving any police officer a fair hearing or the benefit of the doubt.

Domanick claimed the city changed but Gates and the department wouldn’t.  Gates was the chief of police for 14 years and contrary to Domanick’s assertion, the Chief did understand and support the social justice movement.  Domanick just saying Gates didn’t support civil rights, women’s rights and gay and lesbian rights doesn’t make it true.  Disagreeing with Tom Bradley didn’t make the chief a racist.  Most of the time Mayor Bradley was not only wrong but ineffective and aligned with too many special interest groups.  The police department should’ve been bigger and better equipped, but Bradley did nothing to make that happen.  Gates believed in accountability, but promoted aggressive policing because that’s what he had to do when there weren’t enough officers, and the mayor wasn’t doing anything to make it better.  The whole department wasn’t running amok killing unarmed suspects with no accountability.  If by that statement, Domanick was referring to Rampart, it was the LAPD that uncovered those renegade cops.  It’s disingenuous and dishonest to indict a whole department because of a couple of bad cops…yes, a couple.  After all the ranting and raving, the Rampart scandal was proven to be only a handful of bad cops and a weak captain.   Gates’ department never tolerated brutality or lawlessness.  If it had, no one would’ve ever known about Rampart or any of the other rare “scandals” that were quickly uncovered and bad cops fired and punished.

Domanick’s entire editorial is a simplistic shabby analysis of the city’s history and Gates’ tenure as chief.   He touts the Christopher Commission and the consent decree for harnessing and reining in an out-of-control department.  The truth is the commission’s findings and the consent decree were no more than annoyances creating busy work for an already burdened department.  A real historian would’ve looked at the department and Gates’ actions within the context of the time he served and taken into account a number of events including the onset of the crack cocaine epidemic, the rise of violent street gangs, out of control illegal immigration with an increase in drug smuggling, changing demographics in the neighborhoods, a fading recession, a flood of homeless people on the streets (the ACLU’s Sundance decision kept the police from picking them up for being drunk), the tapering off of the anti-war movement’s violence and leftwing groups fomenting violence – a lot of it directed at the police, the remnants of the SLA, SDS and the Weathermen – all handled with one of the smallest police departments in the country for a city as big and complex as L.A.  Since these were just a few of the social issues the police department had to confront and deal with at that time, Gate should’ve been given a lot more credit for his efforts.

Joe Domanick gloats at the end of his editorial that when Bratton became chief of police it drove, “a final stake through the heart of the culture Gates had embraced.”   This guy is really ignorant about the LAPD.  I worked for and knew Chief Gates.  The man was a true leader and innovator who embraced a proud, well-trained, professional police department where courageous men and woman protected and served those who depended on them for law and order.  His department was diverse and dedicated to the rule of law.  He didn’t tolerate dishonesty or cowardice and honored those who risked and many times sacrificed their lives for others and to preserve a tradition of excellence.  That was and is the real culture of the Los Angeles Police Department.  That was Gates’ real legacy and the reason why, almost 20 years after he retired, the man couldn’t walk into any room of police officers from any police department without a standing ovation.

Chief Daryl F. Gates was a better man than Joe Domanick or Jim Newton and deserved a better eulogy than they could possibly give him.