In the Blood

The two detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus rescue a baby from a sinking rowboat. The baby is brought to the hospital, where, a bit later, a guy attempts to kidnap it and gets shot. But a second attempt is successful, and the baby disappears. While searching for the baby, the two detectives get an additional case: an influential Reverend is found dead under suspicious circumstances, it looks like he died during a S&M session...

I found In the Blood too constructed and illogical. And I had trouble to keep up with what's going on: white supremacy, drugs, religion, genetics. Less would have been more. On the other hand I liked the two main characters, Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus.

Some quotes from the book

"You never got a call about a fire?" Harry asked. Briscoe gazed with amusement at the surrounding desolation. "Who would call one in?"

"You have no children?" - "God made it impossible for me to bear children. He thinks I would be an unworthy mother."

"The marriage was like a play, I think. But like almost everyone, I only saw the performances, not what was happening behind the scenes."

No patients or staffers. Just me and a raving lunatic with a stolen kid and an automatic weapon.

The tabloid's story was basically true to the facts because they couldn't be improved upon: one of the nation's most arch-conservative, family-values-trumpeting moralists had died while being whipped by a gay black junkie prostitute.

"I heard the kid was something a doctor made in a laboratory, like a Frankenstein nigger or something."

Her green dress had required less cloth than my handkerchief.

"You got a caller, Carson. Some drunk. Wants to talk to, and I quote, the skinny white guy who can't comb his hair, that cop who goes around with the big black monster."

She turned and stopped my heart. The right side of her face was missing. She threw something my way. It landed on the carpet at my feet. A rag of severed flesh.