Police Detectives

Detective stories are largely a matter of dressing, of seasoning; of putting flesh on the bones of the whodunit, of coloring between the lines. They are as much or more about the who, the where and the when as they are about the how and the why: The English manor house or the American mean street, the dandified Belgian or the medieval monk. There are, after all, only so many reasons people kill one another — murder being the subject of most all mysteries — and only so many ways to do it, and Agatha Christie has already used them all. And so every detective story is a kind of travelogue too. "Zen," which begins Sunday night as a presentation of PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery," takes us to Italy, and not some remote, movie-magical evocation of the place, but the place itself.

In Jonathan Rabb's "The Second Son," a Berlin police detective, Nikolai Hoffner, is cashiered from his post ? circa 1936 ? by the Nazis because he is half-Jewish. Undaunted, he hies off to Spain in search of a son missing in the early days of that country's civil war. The lad is ostensibly a newsreel photographer but is actually a spy in search of guns the Germans are running into Iberia. The author of the well-received novels "Shadow and Light" and "Rosa," Rabb gives readers a premise that is as good as any, and Nikolai is soon traveling up and down the Spanish peninsula, accompanied by Mila, a beauteous doctor, who conveniently appears in the novel's early pages.

Santa Monica police detectives improperly led witnesses and engaged "in an unusual mixture of facts and advocacy" in a child endangerment investigation of a school board member, according to an independent report released this week by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's watchdog unit. The case involved accusations that Oscar de la Torre, a member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board, failed to break up a fight between two youths. The city ordered the report after De la Torre accused the agency of pursuing a politically motivated probe related to the March 16 fight between two 17-year-old boys outside the Pico Youth & Family Center, which De la Torre operates.

What is it about Angie Harmon that makes you want to watch her ensure that justice is done? Is it the cheekbones? The pre-Brazilian-blowout hair? That she has that great voice and the same sort of angularity as a firearm? Whether she's playing a hard-as-nails assistant district attorney on "Law and Order" or a homicide detective on "Women's Murder Club," there's something about Harmon that undeniably captures the archetypal image of the tough but lovely enforcer. Her appeal was not enough to save ABC's "Women's Murder Club" but it might just make TNT's "Rizzoli & Isles," based on the books by Tess Gerritsen, a light, bright addition to the network's cadre of female cops.

In January, Los Angeles Police Det. Nate Kouri was ordered to stop working. One of the LAPD's most productive homicide investigators sat idle for six weeks, unable to follow any leads on old cases or pick up new ones. Kouri was not being punished for misconduct or for botching an investigation. He was benched for working too hard -- and he is not the only one. With the city reeling from its worst financial crisis in decades, the LAPD has stopped paying officers overtime wages, except in rare situations.

A Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel Wednesday decided that a detective should be fired for leaking confidential information about the investigation into a relative's murder. The final say on Det. Michael Slider's career rests with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who can affirm the firing or impose a lesser punishment on the 22-year veteran. Slider's case stems from a night in September 2006 when his teenage niece, Khristina Henry, was robbed at gunpoint outside a bowling alley near Los Angeles International Airport.

Officers throughout the Los Angeles Police Department grieved Tuesday as news spread that a veteran detective had killed herself in the lobby of an L.A. County Sheriff's Department station Monday night. Susan J. Clemmer, a well-regarded officer assigned to the LAPD's Gang and Narcotics Division, walked into the Santa Clarita sheriff's station about 9:15 p.m. and spoke to the sheriff's deputy at the front desk, according to sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore and LAPD officials.

Two men convicted of impersonating police detectives to cheat grieving families out of thousands of dollars have been sentenced to prison. A Superior Court judge in Norwalk on Friday sentenced Frank Kegel of Simi Valley to 10 years and Martin Pelayo of Whittier to 22 years in prison. Kegel and Pelayo were convicted last month of defrauding two Spanish-speaking families between October and November 2007.

A man who robbed a Buena Park theater this week took the time and care to convince his victims that he was a police detective and that he was there to help solve a crime, authorities said Tuesday. He wore a gun on his hip and a badge on his shirt and had a business card identifying him as a Buena Park police officer. He made phone calls to supposed supervisors in front of the victims. Then he turned the gun on the unsuspecting manager and fled with the cash. The incident was reported about 2:30 p.m. Monday at the Krikorian Theatres in the Buena Park Mall, said Buena Park Police Sgt. Bill Kohanek.

The maintenance worker began the day with a walk through Santa Ana Cemetery, past the pinwheel spinning above an elderly couple's tombstone, into the brick and granite niches where a nameplate hung askew. Bending his knees to take a closer look, he saw that the screws had been loosened, and the cremated remains of Deborah Sue Makaryk were gone. He called police and filed a report that listed no leads and offered no evidence, except that Deborah Sue Makaryk was missing. Hours later on Nov.