In New York City's war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad. These are their stories.

As I watch tonight's episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, it strikes me that Kathryn Erbe may be the most underrated performer on network television.

Not a supermodel or glamour girl, Erbe is short, wiry, pushing 40, has flat hair and bad skin, looks like the last plain Jane in the neighborhood bar at closing time, and possesses the creakiest female voice in TV drama since Kate Jackson's heyday. But as Detective Alex Eames (Am I the only one who's noticed how popular the name Alex is for female TV characters these days? Two L&O series — CI and SVU — and CSI: Miami have all featured Alexes in recent seasons), Erbe lends an air of gritty, streetwise intelligence and desert-dry, razor-sharp wit to a vehicle dominated by the quasi-schizophrenic Sherlockian histrionics of Vincent D'Onofrio. And when she took most of last season off for maternity, leaving D'Onofrio without an adequate foil, the show lacked its usual zip.

While I'm on the subject of L&O:CI, if I could trade my speaking voice for any other on the planet, I'd take Courtney B. Vance's resonant baritone in a heartbeat.