The Red Book
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4.4 • 100 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Detective Billy Harney’s reputation as a dirty cop may be the only thing keeping Chicago clean in James Patterson’s most critically-acclaimed thriller since The Black Book.
For Detective Billy Harney, getting shot in the head, stalked by a state’s attorney, and accused of murder by his fellow cops is a normal week on the job. So when a drive-by shooting on the Chicago's west side turns political, he leads the way to a quick solve. But Harney's instincts—his father was once chief of detectives and his twin sister, Patti, is also on the force—run deep. As a population hungry for justice threatens to riot, he realizes that the three known victims are hardly the only casualties.
When Harney starts asking questions about who's to blame, the easy answers prove to be the wrong ones. On the flip side, the less he seems to know, the longer he can keep his clandestine investigation going . . . until Harney's quest to expose the evil that's rotting the city from the inside out takes him to the one place he vowed never to return: his own troubled past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Patterson and Ellis's melodramatic sequel to 2017's The Black Book finds Det. Billy Harney back on duty after being put on paid administrative leave following his discovery of rampant corruption in the Chicago PD. As the face of reform, he couldn't be fired after his "one-man wrecking ball to the police department that made Sherman's march through Atlanta look like a sightseeing tour." Now distrusted by most of his colleagues, the detective is shocked to get a plum assignment with the Special Operations Section, a newly formed elite unit, led by a police lieutenant who once arrested Harney for murder. The focus of the SOS is on a wave of shootings that has made the Windy City notorious nationwide. The shooter's identity and motive prove to be more complicated than initially believed, and the overly labyrinthine mystery ends up connecting to a still-fresh trauma in Harney's past. The fast pace compensates only in part for the formulaic plot and thinly drawn characters. This one's for established fans only.
