Lt. James Reardon is a good cop, aggressive, hard working. He likes his job and knows when to follow his hunches. But in the case of Ralph Crocker, maybe Reardon’s hunch is just the aggravated imagination of a guy who’s had a fight with his best girl. Or it may have been his excuse for getting involved in a traffic case when he had no business getting involved. Crocker killed a man with his car, an open and shut case of accidental death. He insisted that the victim stepped out of the night on a poorly lit, deserted waterfront street and right in front of his 1940 Buick. The car’s bumper, the skid marks — everything checked by the APB Squad confirmed Crocker’s story. Reardon couldn’t leave it alone. Something kept bugging him. With the help of Sergeant Dondero, he began to turn up some unexplained little details, not enough to prove anything but enough to put a young Lieutenant out on a limb for bending regulations. All Reardon knew for sure was that an automobile was a weapon anyone could license and use at will. When Reardon’s shrewd sleuthing finally pays off, a desperate criminal makes a break for freedom while the skillfully directed forces of the San Francisco police close in, in a wild careening chase — a chase that becomes amphibious in the fogbound harbor. REARDON is a police procedural novel of excitement and adventure — all played out against the glamorous back-ground of the Golden Gate City