Series mystery writers always have to compete with themselves while trying to keep the faith with readers who just want variations on the same old theme. Laurence Gough typically responds on two tracks, first by inching the Willows-Parker relationship along at a snail’s pace, and second, by turning up the intensity of the psychopathic killers he has patented as his central protagonists.

On the relationship level, the lovestruck Vancouver detectives who can’t keep their hands off each other now live together. But the progress in Memory Lane is limited to Willows starting to mutter about getting a divorce from his estranged wife. It’s an acceptable tactic and one that the author can probably drag out for another book or two, but it’s unlikely he can keep the tension going if he marries them off.

As for the blood-thirsty killers who give Gough’s novels that specially ominous quality, he may be running low on inspiration. This new novel features characters so unlikely as to become caricatures of earlier, more complex models, such as the evil but brilliant specimen in the 1992 classic, Fall Down Easy.

Memory Lane hits us between the eyes in the first few pages with a jailbird who gouged the eye out of an amorous cellmate, then stabbed the man to death with his own knife as the gouged eye dangled down his cheek. The gouger and stabber, unmoved by the enormity of his deed, is calmly wondering what it was like to die looking both ways. That’s a bit trite, and this guy isn’t even the principal villain.

The book lurches along on shaky plot lines thereafter, moving from one horrendous crime scene to the next in a connect-the-dots style that gropes for, but doesn’t quite achieve, a suspenseful denouement.