In Philadelphia--suffering among the country's highest murder rates--the
tension between the Philadelphia Police Department and its Citizens
Oversight Committee has long been reaching a boiling point. That turmoil
turns from bad to worse shortly after the committee begins targeting
police shootings--especially those of twenty-seven-year-old Homicide
Sergeant Matt Payne, the "Wyatt Earp of the Main Line"--and then the
committee's combative leader is found shot dead point-blank on the front
porch of his run-down Philly row house.
As chanting protesters fill the streets, the city threatens to erupt.
Payne, among many others accused of being complicit in the leader's
death, becomes quietly furious. He suspects there's something deeper
behind it all, but what? Ordered to stay out of the line of fire, he
struggles ahead to do what he does best--his job. He's been
investigating the murder of a young family. A reporter, working on an
illicit drug series for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mickey O'Hara,
has been killed with his wife and child, a note stapled to his chest
warning that the drug stories are to stop. Period. While Payne knows
that he, like his pal O'Hara, cannot back down, he also knows that they
damn sure could be among the next to die....
