Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave

 

Theodore Tate, known as Teddy, is finally getting his life back.  When his wife and daughter were hit by a car, his daughter killed and his wife left in a coma, Teddy went into a tailspin.  He started drinking heavily and ended up losing his job as a police detective in Christchurch, New Zealand.  He became a private investigator and after a successful case, ended up in the hospital himself.  But he is healed physically and his wife has woken from her coma.  Teddy even gets his job back and he thinks all is well.

His former partner, Schroder, didn't do as well.  He ended up damaged after a case, shot in the head.  The doctors weren't able to remove the bullet and Schroder is living under a death warrant.  One day the bullet will migrate in his brain and that will be his end.  He is off the police force, sitting in his house wondering what to do with the rest of his life.

But crime goes on no matter who is on the police force.  When called out to a man dead on the railroad tracks, Teddy and his new partner assume it is a suicide until the coroner tells them the man was dead before he was placed on the tracks.  Upon further investigation, it turns out that the man was a vicious rapist who had recently been released from prison.  Often after a rape or murder, the police are asked by the victim's family for 'just five minutes alone' with the perpetrator.  Had someone gotten their five minutes?

That begins to seem likely as other murders start to occur.  In each case, the dead men are former rapists or murderers, guilty of vicious crimes that for whatever reason they managed to get out of.  Christchurch has a vigilante and Tate is put in charge of the investigation.  But he suspects that his worst fear is true; his former partner is now a killer.  

This is the fourth in the Theodore Tate series.  Teddy is a man who fate has tossed around but it finally seems that he is getting his life back together.  Readers cannot help but be on his side as he tiptoes a fine line between rounding up murderers and killing them.  There is violence and gruesome descriptions in this book that bring the work of a homicide detective into reality for the reader.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.