Bring Out Your Dead: Volume Three In The Service With A Sneer Chronicles

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Shakespeare's words aptly describe the Southern California City of Oceanside in 1984. It's a violent town full of pitiless marauders and anarchic violence. Armed street gangs fight over drug turf, serial sexual predators prowl the nighttime streets, and armed robbery is a commonplace occurrence. Oceanside cops refer to their city as "where the debris meets the sea."

Welcome to the third volume of John J. Lamb's remarkable memoirs. Promoted from the rank of street cop, Lamb is now a brand new homicide detective. However, he doesn't have the luxury of an extended apprenticeship. The carnage is so unremitting, he must hit the ground running. Before a week has passed, he's handling his very first murder investigation. Fortunately for the citizens of Oceanside, he is about to reveal himself as a skilled and canny detective.

Lamb takes the reader back to a time of old school cop work. DNA analysis, computerized fingerprint searches, facial recognition software, and damning evidence from cell phone downloads don't exist. Instead, crimes are solved by knocking on doors to locate witnesses, wearing out shoe leather on the streets, and riding close herd on street informants.

The book comes with the warning that some of the nightmarish stories definitely aren't for the squeamish. The tales include:

A dead and nameless toddler is found in a trash dumpster. The little boy has been beaten to death. With no leads and or witnesses, Lamb embarks on a relentless search for the killer.

A gay man has been brutally stabbed 43 times inside his home. Lamb doggedly works for six months to identify the killer. Finally, the detective persuades one of his informants to tell what he knows.

An armed serial rapist is operating in the city. He's already stabbed one victim in the throat and nearly killed her. Lamb analyzes the suspect's behavior, hoping to accurately predict where the predator will strike next.

Lamb finds himself in conflict with a senior detective over how best to induce a man to confess to having murdered a woman by smashing her body repeatedly with a 42-pound rock. The older cop pushes for a hardball approach, while Lamb insists that a more patient approach will get the killer to admit to the horrific crime.

Two young men are found handcuffed together and murdered execution-style in a vacant home that formerly housed a methamphetamine lab. As the leads peter out, the detective bureau commander worries that the unsolved case will harm his chances to make captain. He all but orders Lamb to ignore the evidence and close the case as a murder-suicide.