Justin Westwood has retreated from reality by taking a menial post with the police department in Long Island. Mindless traffic duty and a lot of booze stop him reliving the past, but his dormant professionalism is reluctantly awakened when he realises that the death of a young journalist is deliberate not accidental. As he retraces the woman's movements in the hours before her death he learns she's been in trouble for quoting some erroneous facts in an obituary of a man who had been living in the local old people's home. Not the sort of mistake which normally brings a duo of professional hitmen to the door of a fallible reporter, and certainly not one which brings the FBI into town. As he attempts to unravel the puzzle he finds someone is a step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses and setting him up for the rap. Realising he has to face real life at its starkest if he is to survive, he goes solo - though if he'd known what was in store he'd have stuck to handing out parking tickets. A thriller of such tension and action that it should come with its own oxygen supply.