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

by Del Quentin Wilber

Overview

Twelve homicides, three police-involved shootings, and the 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. After a quiet couple of months, all hell breaks loose: suddenly every detective in the squad is scrambling to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. Meanwhile, the entire unit is obsessed with a stone-cold "red ball," a high-profile case involving a seventeen-year-old honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked down the door to her house and shot her in her bed.

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 what it takes to succeed when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250135506
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	07/03/2017
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	405,464
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

DEL QUENTIN WILBER is the New York Times bestselling author of Rawhide Down, an account of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. An award-winning reporter who previously worked for The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, he now covers the justice department for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

"Superb—one of the best real-life cop books ever written." —Lee Child

"The book is briskly paced. . . . Wilber, a former Washington Post reporter, is painstaking in tracing how the detectives go about their fieldwork. The cat-and-mouse games they play with suspects in the interrogation room are fascinating." —The Washington Post

"Excellent . . . Mr. Wilber has a keen reporter's eye and ear for detail and a deft pen that sometimes skewers with funny yet unstinting prose the very detectives who granted him entrée to their world. . . . Wilber gets high marks for placing readers smack inside the world of his characters—in the stuffy, fluorescent-lit homicide offices, the bloody murder scenes, and the claustrophobic interview rooms as detectives cajole, intimidate, and banter with witnesses." —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Wilber is a former veteran Baltimore Sun and Washington Post reporter who spent one cold February in 2013 tailing . . . this group of hardened but dedicated detectives, bent on justice but beset by impossible odds. It's like David Simon's The Wire—urgent but cold-eyed and tragic—and it's all true." —Men's Fitness

"With this engrossing and compelling account of the reality of crime and policing, Del Quentin Wilber affirms his place as one of the nation's most accomplished writers of first-rate narrative nonfiction. Put away your mysteries and thrillers—this is the real thing, rendered with grit and with grace." —Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Destiny and Power

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2016
According to Wilber (Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan), February 2013 was a "good month for murder." Twelve murders and three police-involved shootings hit hard the already overworked homicide squad of Maryland's Prince George's County police department. Located outside of Washington, DC, the county has gritty detectives trying to finish cases and bring a bit of closure to the families left behind. These real-life investigators are not the stuff of fiction, nor do all the cases get wrapped up with a neat little bow. This book may remind listeners of David Simon's television show Homicide in its quality, accessibility, and style; it could easily be included on lists of the best true crime books of the past 20 years. Johnny Heller's well-executed narration enhances the listening experience. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["No doubt Wilber has the expertise to pen these accounts, but the presentation is a turnoff": LJ 2/15/16 review of the Holt hc.]—Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.

Library Journal

Proving that real life is nothing like television, this bird’s-eye view of real police investigating a rash of murders in Prince George's County, Maryland, is a sobering look at police work. Narrator Johnny Heller walks listeners through this account of 12 murders in one month and how a group of exhausted, overworked detectives try to solve the crimes. Heller speaks in a matter-of-fact tone as the author breaks down the crimes. While the story is at times overburdened with excessive background on the characters, the book’s realism sets it apart from crime novels and television shows. There are no gotcha revelations from a drop of blood to solve the crime—just tons of tedious police work. M.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile

2016-04-11
Propulsive account of a hard-charging homicide unit in a high-crime Washington, D.C., suburb.Wilber (Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan, 2011), who covers the Justice Department for the Los Angeles Times, develops a vivid sense of place alongside gritty workaday realities, resulting in a fresh take on the familiar topic of killers and their pursuers. He focuses on Prince George's County, a sprawling "microcosm of the new America" that conceals startling murder rates, even during the chilly February of 2013, when the detectives he shadowed felt "there was simply too much pent-up violence on the streets, and it needed an outlet." The resulting 12 murders included gang sprees, home invasions, drug-conspiracy killings, and predatory robberies. The rash of violence fully taxed the 25 detectives whom Wilber profiles, a diverse, eccentric, yet accomplished array who can be "like cut-ups in high-school biology class"—notwithstanding their grisly surroundings and the challenge of investigation, equal parts forensic precision, bureaucratic documentation, and Kafka-esque conversations with criminal prevaricators. Such interviews with suspects make up several tense stretches, where "for the most part, the suspect deflects and evades" while still giving away insights to their interrogators (and Wilber). In a narrative light on technical and tactical aspects of policing, the author focuses on environmental and tactile details, humanizing his detectives and a supporting cast of victims, survivors, and perpetrators. Many murder victims are entrenched in the regional underground of drug dealing and serial crime, making the detectives jaded and the investigations a slog; contrastingly, the detectives work furiously to solve the vicious killings of a teenage honor student and an elderly woman. Regarding these cases involving innocent victims, one veteran detective exclaims, "We are going old-school here." Wilber embedded with the unit for several months, until his "narrative architecture" suggested itself; this immersive approach allows him to capture the cops' inner monologues and their prickly exchanges with criminals and one another with effective clarity. Readable, appealing true crime with an undercurrent of unease at the violence creeping into so many postindustrial "edge city" communities.

Kirkus Reviews