A Murder of Justice Hardcover - 2004

by Robert Andrews

When Skeeter Hodges is gunned down in a quiet black Washington, D.C., neighborhood, few mourn the loss. A vicious drug runner rumored to have killed twenty or thirty of his competitors, he was never brought to trial-witnesses simply vanished or conveniently forgot what they'd seen. To Frank Kearney and José Phelps, Skeeter finally got what he'd been handing out all along. Still, it was murder and they were cops. That means a serious search for his killer . . .

Until their boss intervenes and lays out the priorities: Go back to some of those scared witnesses and push. See how many of the District's unsolved cases can be laid at Skeeter's door. Make the department's numbers look good-no small task in a city where a third of all annual killings remain unsolved.

But making the numbers and making a collar are two very different things. And for Kearney and Phelps, the absence of arrests relates directly to the city's growing lawlessness. As the streets of D.C.-especially the black streets-remain killing fields, citizen distrust of color-selective law enforcement can spell only anarchy for an already troubled town.

A Murder of Justice is Robert Andrews's darkest and most intricate book, amply fulfilling Lee Child's early prediction that his would be a classic series.