Susan Dunlap. Cop Out (1997) 296 pp.
In Berkeley, Jill Smith, the people’s policewoman, investigates the disappearance of an informant. The department disapproves of this; they think she devotes too much time to bums and nobodies, but Jill feels nobodies deserve police protection too. The missing man is Jill’s friend, counter-cultural private eye Herman Ott, who vanishes when a flamboyant mediator of civic disputes is found shot to death in his office. Fearing for his safety, and defying the wishes of her department, Jill wades into the wild world of Berkeley’s most contentious citizens to find out why Herman Ott is running for his life.