A Good Month for Murder ─ The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad

Bestselling author Del Quentin Wilber tells the inside story of how a murder squad—a dedicated, colorful team of homicide detectives—does its almost impossible job

Twelve homicides, three police shootings and a furious hunt for an especially brutal killer—February 2013 was a good month for murder in suburban Washington, D.C.

After gaining unparalleled access to the homicide unit in Prince George's County, which borders the nation's capital, Del Quentin Wilber begins shadowing the talented, often quirky detectives who get the call when a body falls. He rides with a hard-charging investigator who pops diet pills while devouring cheeseburgers; he stands over a corpse with a hulking detective who works security at a cemetery to earn extra money; he spends hours in the interrogation room, a.k.a. the box, with a hyper-competitive, chain-smoking vegan. And then, after a quiet couple of months, all hell breaks loose: suddenly every detective in the squad is working day and night to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. In particular, the entire unit becomes obsessed with a "red ball," a high-profile case involving a round-cheeked seventeen-year-old honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked in her bedroom door and shot her dead.

Murder is the police investigator's ultimate crucible: to solve a killing, a detective must speak for the dead. More than any recent book,A Good Month for Murder shows us what it takes to succeed when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher.