Black and Blue-James Patterson and Candice Fox, authors; Federay Holmes, narrator
Detective Harriet Blue goes by the name of Harry. She has a brother Samuel. They both came up the hard way. She is a good cop. He is a teacher at a university in Sidney.
When the book opens, Harry is stalking Ben Hammond. He escaped conviction for the rape he committed and she taught him a lesson. Harry wants to work on the case of a serial killer, the Georges River Killer, but she is thwarted at every turn, and she believes it is because she is female.
She is teamed up on a case with a cop who is considered Toxic and that is indeed his nickname. His real name is Tate Barnes, but Tox Barnes, as he is called, apparently as a youngster, only 7 years old, had committed a murder, a murder of a mother and child. As hard as it is to believe someone only 7 was guilty of such a crime, it is harder to believe that he would be ostracized for it so many years later, but the force rejected him because of it. They do not believe he has a right to be a cop, but he happens to be a good one, even if he makes his own rules and works alone much of the time. Although those on the force resented his past, and punished any officer willing to work with him, one has to wonder if their present way of treating him, and those working with him, did not also leave a lot to be desired. He was gruff, however, and made it hard to like him. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism.
Harry and Tox successfully worked together to heroically solve their case and a case that other cops were working on. They stopped a very sick woman, Hope Stallwood, from continuing to murder the victims who stood in the way of her effort to rewrite her own life. She had no conscience and felt no remorse for her vicious crimes. She was very angry and very disturbed.
In the surprise ending, it seems there were others who were unexpectedly discovered to be very disturbed. Mental illness is often undiagnosed or unobserved, but it lurks in the minds of many who do evil things.