Reardon (The Lieutenant Reardon Mysteries)

To stop a crime wave, a San Francisco cop investigates a ring of smugglers

Homicide lieutenant James Reardon is raising a martini to his lips when the call comes in from headquarters. He is late for a meeting and the chief is furious. The cocktail, and Reardon’s girlfriend, will have to wait. The meeting is a waste of time—a federal agent repeating platitudes about the dangers of drug smuggling—and Reardon is grateful when a call comes in on the radio, requesting his presence at the scene of a fatal traffic accident. He assumes it will be routine, but Lieutenant Reardon is in for an evening of agony.
 
The driver claims that he was only going fifteen miles an hour when the victim stepped off the curb. Reardon doesn’t buy it. And when he learns the dead man had just gotten off a ship from Southeast Asia, he realizes that the federal agent was right: Smuggling is a murderous business.