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THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday May MM- Page Book Review Black Sand will make the reader burn the midnight oil to finish By CHUCK KONKEL I must confess that when I first started reading Black Sand I had serious reservations that Williams the author of two enor mously successful bestsellers One Police Plaza and Suspects could pull it off again And for the first few chapters as the plot unravelled like a crusty papyrus scroll with seemingly endless digressions into Greek history and mythology I smugly congratulated myself on my original perception But as I read on I gradually came to appreciate the well honed skills of as a plot developer and the intriguing complexity of Black Sand Crown Publishing pages as a tale The story opens on the sunny Aegean isle of Voula with the shooting of two Greek patrolmen and the massacre of a crowd of in nocent bystanders by two armed men for no apparent reason One of the survivors whose entire family has been murdered before his eyes is a Greek police major nam ed Andreas Vassos Vassos sets out in pursuit He follows a detailed paper trail that takes the Hellenic official to New York There Vassos finds himself partnered with Ted Lucas a GreekAmerican cop who teeters on the brink of abject cynicism as he struggles through the nightmare of modernday Manhat tan with a detective office as cosmopolitan as the United Na tions and much more effective Their mission To find the killers and as they soon discover to recover Homers from a cabel of unscrupulous thieves con- men and murderers who will stop at nothing from strangulation by guitar strings to the Use of boa con strictors to protect their illgotten gain The national treasure of Greece is truly worthy of a kings ransom and at times Vassos and Lucas must feel they require that to pay off the corrupt officials who populate the newly infrastructure Documents are obtained on the sly cadavers declared truly dead conflicting fingerprints sorted out everything is expedited for a price for money in the unfeeling shadow of the Statue of Liberty Along the way bodies are dispat ched to their doom with blood curdling frequency as the two detectives doggedly follow their prey from Greece to Korea to Italy and finally to downtown New York in an unrelenting that culminates in a chase as memorable exciting and unlikely as any in recent popular crime fic tion Somehow along the way the heroes enlist help from agencies as diverse as the Greek Secret Police US Customs the American State Department the CIA and what else in this age of the KGB liaison officer with the Yes Svetlana there is a Santa Claus BEATS POLICE MANUAL Where Caunitz excels is in his ability to capture and incorporate police trivia into his work With Black Sand aficionados of the genre of police procedure will be amply rewarded with more in teresting albeit generally irrele vant snippets of administrative in formation than is contained in the patrolmans manual That is not to say Black Sand is solely the mindnumbing and in evitable toe tags some police pro cedural use to create the aura of From surveillance techniques to warrant procedures from finger print analysis to homicide scenes from dental impression work to burst transmitter relaysatellite transmission secrets of pinhole photography and methods with which to bypass infrared alarm systems Caunitz has created a veritable feast of fascinating which serves quite suitably as the motor drive with which to drive his multilayered plot to conclusion It is in the area of character development locale and dialogue that Caunitz stumbles His people are stick men who move along the numbered grid that is mid- Manhattan His Greece is as memorable as a spelling bee of Greek culinary delicacies and not nearly as ambitious His Greek police are Manhattan beat cops beamed down to the sun ny Aegean not living breathing in dividuals with a cultural identity behavior and value system of their own The rich tapestry of Greek life deserves more than Black Sand has to offer Chuck- Konkel is a sergeant with the Metro Toronto Police and the author of the best- selling novel The Glorious East Wind about the last years of Hong Kong TRUCK DRIVERS REQUIRED Attend Ontarios Oldest and Largest School Specializing in complete Class A training Train with the professionals Over graduates Job placement lance available No ex perience necessary TRANSPORT Brampton 7 DAYS 87321 51 Sun Thurs Wed Saturday DENTURE THERAPY CLINIC AW TRENTON DT 18 CHURCH STREET GEORGETOWN ACROSS FROM LIBRARY AND CULTURAL CENTRE These Stores Have The Convenient Hours To Serve You DELREX SMOKE SHOP LTD St Clair Ice Cream Cones GEORGETOWN MAHKET PLACE Lottery Agent Variety Post Office target OPEN OPEN HOURS DAYS MOVIE RENTALS SI GEORGETOWN BOXED MEATS FROZEN FOOD NOW OPEN SUNDAYS 1700 STEAK EXPRESS Johmince Bulk Foods FOB ALL YOUR NEEDS 5- Professional Application special BY APPOINTMENT ONLY FREE BRIDAL CONSULTATION GROUP RATES CAROLINE Values In Effect From Monday May Through May YOUR LOCAL 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