"Jack Kelly writes like a man ready for a rumble." -New York Daily News "One of the rules... You don't mess with married women. It's tempting, sure. Forbidden Fruit. He got, I want. But you're only buying trouble and there's enough trouble to be had for nothing." So says police officer Ray Dolan. But when the sultry Sheila Travis moves in next door, the rules go out the window. Line of Sight is a stunning example of the neo-noir genre, complete with breathtaking plot twists, crackling dialogue, and sizzling eroticism. It promises to establish Kelly as one of the most stylish writers of crime fiction, on a level with Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, and Walter Mosley. Ray Dolan is a man haunted by looking. He spends his days keeping watch over a decaying rust-belt city, his nights peering at the stars. Then the seductive glimpse of a woman's shape in a window draws him into a nightmare of murder and accusation. Dolan knows who's innocent and who's guilty. But does he know how to escape from a terrifying sexual and moral labyrinth The story unfolds in prose that has the glint of a knife blade in the dark. The explosive novel reminds the reader that each of us walks through a minefield of hidden obsession and unexpected passion. A wrong step, a wrong look, can transform our desires into violence with lethal suddenness. Line of Sight brings to mind noir classics like Double Indemnity and Body Heat. At the same time, the novel goes beyond the hard-boiled genre to explore the moral and emotional dimensions of obsession, crime, and police power in American society. A straight, not-so-smart cop who falls for a sexy married woman with her eye on a quick exit from her marriage (with the proceeds from a hefty insurance policy on her husband's life, natch) makes Line of Sight a noirish thriller that could go right from the manuscript to the B-movie screen. When Ray Dolan meets Sheila Travis, you can see the ending coming in this barely steamy mystery that's long on heavy breathing and short on characterization, pacing, and plot. The reader longs for Ray to smarten up and get out of Sheila's bedroom before she puts a gun in his hand and makes him do something he'd never imagined doing, but of course he does it anyway. The only surprise is that he gets away with it (sort of), but not until over 300 pages of turgid prose have been flipped. The real mystery is which James M. Cain novel Jack Kelly had at hand when he penned this one, and how many pages one can read until the flight attendant announces the in-flight movie and beverage service. (Hint: all of them.) Is "Howard the Duck" better entertainment at 30,000 feet? You be the judge. --Jane Adams Boy meets girl, boy sleeps with girl, girl's husband gets shot, etc.Kelly ( Mad Dog , 1992, etc.) knows you've heard this story before, so he does his best to dress it up. His feckless hero, Ray Dolan, is a cop whose upstate New York community thinks of him as a downright heroic straight-arrow. He knows how much stress their grinding diet of crime puts on his fellow officers, but he's got enough backbone to turn away from them if they cross the line into violence. When his romance with an attractive newscaster doesn't take off, he bows out gracefully, leaving them still friends. Local higher-ups start to make political overtures to him. In short, Ray is a model lead-except for his fatal attraction to his new neighbor Sheila Travis, whose insurance-salesman husband Lance is such a miserable human being (a cocky drug-user who snorts coke under Ray's eyes, an abusive parent whose relations with his daughter Brie won't stand close scrutiny, an uncaring husband who doesn't appreciate the treasure he's leaving behind in bed every time he goes on the road) that Sheila almost wishes he'd die. If Ray, a good cop who's not exactly a team player, had read his James M. Cain, he'd know what's coming next; and it's a tribute to Kelly's prose, alternately moody and lightning-quick, that even readers who do know will find themselves pulled along in fascinated dread. And if Kelly's fondness for portentous astronomical metaphors, and an especially brazen theft from The Postman Always Rings Twice , mark him as less able than Cain, he has a lovely way with a nasty phrase, as when a developer's wife appears "perpetually young, [with] the eyes of an accountant," and saves a couple of nifty surprises for the endgame.A highly effective noir valentine that fans will treasure precisely for its ritualistic lack of originality. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Jack Kelly is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: Apalachin, Protection, and Mad Dog. He has also written screenplays and articles on history. He lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York.