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. . . .