from barnesandnoble.com:

Publishers Weekly
This 10th entry in Dunlap's Jill Smith series (after Sudden Exposure) is a deft and engrossing treatment of greed, trust and betrayal that puts a new spin on political correctness. Smith's police work in Berkeley, Calif., involves her with people on the fringes of society-street people, con artists and old radicals. But then, as this unpredictable mystery points out, Smith herself, idealistic and intolerant of authority, lives on the fringes of the police department. Her informant, Herman Ott, "private detective to the counterculture," is a defender of the underdog whose tenacious protection of many felons has earned him the enmity of the Berkeley police. When the body of Bryant Hemming, head of the Arts and Creativity Council and a well-regarded arbitrator of local disputes, is discovered dead in Ott's office, and when Ott himself is nowhere to be found, suspicion falls upon the unconventional PI, and Smith is torn between her belief in Ott's innocence and her duty to the police. Smith's investigation reveals Berkeley's eccentrics at their best-and worst-and her methods are offbeat enough to antagonize her superiors. She eventually uncovers complex connections that point to financial fraud and finds that no one, particularly the parsimonious Ott, is what he seems to be. Smith's problematic romance with the burly and emotionally needy officer Seth Howard is always lively, adding another wrinkle of color to a series marked by its vividly depicted setting and admirably controlled plots. (May)

Library Journal
With each Jill Smith mystery (this is the ninth), the plots grow more convoluted and harder to believe, no matter how hard one tries. In this case, Smith tries to help p.i. Herman Ott, who also happens to be a murder suspect. The trail leads from a Telegraph Avenue jewelry vendor and a religious leader who surrounds himself with thugs to a tattoo artist, a patient defender, and ultimately a deadly pesticide. The offbeat Berkeley setting and mix of characters may appeal to Californians, but for others the detritus of the Sixties is just that.

Kirkus Reviews
Nine times now have we heard from Berkeley policewoman Jill Smith. Having in Sudden Exposure (1996) been busted to a beat cop after a stint as homicide detective, Jill continues to aggravate her boss and buddies by identifying with social outsiders. This time, local p.i. Herman Ott has disappeared with an unidentified stranger, leaving an equally unidentified unexplained dead body in his characteristically messy office. Mangy but moralistic Herman had had a secret for Jill that he reneged on telling. And now TV celebrity Brian Hemming, champion "mediator" between little guys and corporate interests on the eve of a career upgrade to D.C, has also been murdered by: 1) his assistant Roger Macalester, whose idea had been coopted? 2) his ex-wife Daisy Culligan, whose own career had been hung out to dry? 3) Brother Cyril, a cleric with attitude and the disgruntled recipient of Brian's services? 4) or Ott himself, who kept a likely murder weapon stashed in an unused flag-holder? Other questions: was bribery a factor, or chicanery vis-à-vis the artists' money fund Brian administered? Jill's case wheels in grinding circles as she winnows the "old rad" Berkeley culture to find the points where it impinges on corrupt careerism. Obsessed with a stubborn loyalty to absent Ott, she repeatedly disobeys orders until she pays the price.
Solid and laden with local color, but lifeless. Whatever secrets Jill uncovers, Dunlap's real preoccupation is with her heroine's conflicted relationship with her cop life and lover, making this more of a sociologically enhanced soap opera than a mystery.