The jacket blurb of "An Hour to Kill" proclaims it to be a story about two detectives--Gurson, a divorced father who's own father killed himself when he was young, and Kane, a black lesbian branded as a troublemaker in the department for her refusal to put up with with their racist, sexist, and homophobic practices--who discover to their horror that they are intimately connected with the murders they're trying to solve.

Kane in particular is shocked to discover that one of the bodies, burned beyond recognition, turns out to be her ex-partner and ex-lover, Charlene Leone, who was recently released from the police force for getting a little too involved with drugs during her undercover assignment.

In reality, however, the book is really Gurson's story, and is told from his point of view. Although Kane's issues are addressed, they're always related through conversations with Gurson, and for most of the book she's somewhere in the background.

Yapalater doesn't sugar-coat the challenges faced by lesbian officers, but she doesn't really explore them, either; just makes the point that homophobia is rampant in the police force, and moves on. Although Kane is ultimately vindicated, you don't get the sense that the police force is suddenly a welcome place for her. In this way, Yapalater avoids preaching to her reader and creates a realistically un-tidy world.

On the other hand, we never really see the issues from Kane's perspective, beyond a few bitter comments she makes to other police officers. It would have been really interesting to get inside her head the way we do with Gurson, and since Yapalater makes a point to switch the narrative voices often, it is surprising that Kane is so rarely one of them.

The story is interesting and fast-paced, but the twist at the end stretches credibility a bit, and the inclusion of numerous violent sexual acts start to feel a little overdone two-thirds of the way through the story. Like Christopher Rice's "The Snow Garden," reading this novel will soon have you thinking everyone has violent, manipulative sexual secrets more shocking than anything you've heard before, which gets old after awhile.

The biggest problem with this novel from a structural standpoint, however, is that there are too many characters to keep up with, particularly in the beginning. It isn't until about halfway through the novel that you start to make sense of who is who, and by that point you're exhausted trying to keep up. Switching the narrative voices every other chapter doesn't help, either; just because the writer can show you the inside of every character's head doesn't mean they should.

But if you're a fan of detective novels and you don't mind explicit, violent sex, "An Hour to Kill" is still worth reading. If Yapalater had written it more as a character study than a series of shocking events, however, and if she had let the reader get to know a few characters in depth rather than many characters superficially, it just could have been much better.

Amazon.com: An Hour to Kill