Badge of honor

Police work made more difficult by a hostile press when kidnapping spree terrifies city.

Detectives Jason Washington and Matt Payne are under pressure to solve three murders--a policeman shot in his home, a bar owner and his partner's wife gunned down together, and a wealthy young woman dead of a drug overdose

Recently promoted to sergeant and assigned to the homicide department, detective Matt Payne finds more than his share of challenges in three assignments involving a fast-food shooting, a guru murderer, and a police movie star.

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...

Suffering among the country's highest murder rates; the tension between the Philadelphia PD 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...