"There's a sudden spike in murders in Philadelphia, but no one seems to mind much, because the victims are street thugs and lowlifes. But as Homicide sergeant Matt Payne starts looking under the right rocks, he gets a feeling there's more going on than just bad guys burning one another..." -- inside front cover.

Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is used to murder, but lately there's been an awful lot of it in Philadelphia. A gangland shooting in a popular tourist location has left six dead, most of them innocent bystanders, and days later the body of a headless Latina turns up in the Schuykill River. Everybody assumes they're not related, but Payne can't shake the hunch that there's something more to it--and that hunch leads him far from the City of Brotherly...

"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...