Special Operations: Badge of Honor 02 (Badge of Honor)

In this exciting new series, W.E.B. Griffin reveals a city police force with all the authentic detail and drama that made THE CORPS and BROTHERHOOD OF WAR phenomenal bestsellers. Here is an explosive novel of the men and women behind the badge--a unique brotherhood of courage, loyalty, and trust. Facing a desperate public, a hostile press, and reluctant witnesses, they must stop a new reign of violence--a terrifying spree of kidnapping and rape that has plunged the entire city in fear... Publishers Weekly This police procedural, the second in the Badge of Honor series, ostensibly concerns efforts to nab a serial rapist at large in Philadelphia, but the real subjects here are the interior lives of police officers and the department politics that complicate their jobs. Unlike the genre's often embittered flatfoots who are more like their quarry than the people they serve, Dugan's ( Men in Blue ) cops, zealous recruits in the freshly minted Special Operations division, are boyish, sexy, respectful, and always and unambiguously the good guys. The plot contains practically no overt violence or graphic sex--usually the stock-in-trade of contemporary cops-and-robbers yarns--and chief characters are credibly fashioned. Pleasant enough on its own terms, the book lacks the meticulous detail and shake-'em-up style that most procedural fans expect. (Oct.) Mary Elizabeth Flannery first came to the attention of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia at 9:21 P.M., June 29, 1973, when an unidentified civilian called the Police Emergency number and reported that as she and her husband had been driving through Fairmount Park, going down Bell's Mill Road toward Chestnut Hill, they had seen a naked woman, just walking around, on the Chestnut Hill side of the bridge over Wissahickon Creek. Philadelphia's Special Operations task force commander, Inspector Peter Wohl, leads his men and women on the trail of a maniacal and vile psychotic on a rape and murder rampage