Lt. Leroy Powder is in charge of the Indianapolis Police's Missing Persons department. The job's what matters in Powder's life - doing it well, doing it right. He struggles when he finds that other officers don't care about their work the same way he does. Don't they want to become better cops?

Still, Powder's reign in Missing Persons has seen the department expand and win praise. Which brings in more and more cases - even before his wheelchair-bound sergeant brings in a wheelchair-bound friend who has a conspiracy theory.

Could someone really be killing hundreds of disabled people of Indiana? And if it's happening, why won't the cops upstairs take it seriously? It ought to be their problem. It's not like it's a missing persons' case. Not like the missing father of a twelve-year-old boy, or even that of the girl whose parents think she's being kept by a cult against her will.

With rapid-fire dialogue, dry humour and plot twists that turn one step ahead of the reader, Late Payments proves again that Leroy Powder is one of the least endearing and most enjoyable police heroes around.

. . .a roughly likable, steadily entertaining mixture of gritty procedure, downbeat humor, and middle-age angst