Badge of Honor

W.E.B. Griffin's best-selling series, The Corps and Brotherhood of War, have captured the pride and glory of the military community. Now he reveals a city police force with the same unique blend of realism, drama, and action. Here are the brave men and women behind the badge as you've never seen them before - their hopes and fears, their courage and heroism, sparked by a single, shocking event: The killing of a cop in the line of duty.

Facing a desperate public, a hostile press, and reluctant witnesses, the Philadelphia Police Department must try and stop a new reign of violence - a terrifying spree of kidnapping and assault that has plunged the city into fear.

A brutal Mafia slaying rocks the city of Philadelphia when the only living witness is revealed - a wealthy debutante involved with the targeted mobster. One of the suspects is a cop, Matt Payne, who unwittingly takes on the ultimate battle between organized crime, upper-class power...and his own police force.

The robbery ended in murder, the killers claimed to be terrorists, and the only cooperative witness feared for his life. Police Officer Matt Payne knew the dangers of his profession - but never thought that he himself would be the one who needed protection..

A political assasin is ready to make his move. The police department's only clue is a single, perfectly typed bomb threat. And worse yet, the police aren't sure they can trust their own people. In a few short days, the corruption of one cop - and the madness of an assasin - could blow the whole city sky high...

A Philadelphia narcotics cop is shot dead in his home. A bar owner's wife and partner are gunned down during an attempted robbery. And in a beautiful mansion, a young woman dies of a heroin overdose. At first the crimes seem unconnected. But these four deaths are about to trigger a massive convergence of corruption, cops, and the mob that could tear the Philadelphia Police Department apart from the inside out. All the way to the top...

A brutal crime.... A group of urban terrorists.... An investigation of dirty cops.... The leads in these supposedly unconnected cases have become tangled in some very ugly - and dangerous - knots. Now Special Operations detective Matt Payne and his colleagues find themselves fearing not only for their jobs, but also for their very lives.

Detective Matt Payne - newly promoted to Sergeant and assigned to Homicide - finds himself in the middle of three major assignments. The first, a fatal shooting at a fast-food restaurant, seems simple, but rapidly becomes complicated.

Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is paired with a Texas Ranger to bring down a murderer with Mexican cartel connections. The odd couple of the Philly cop and the Texas lawman must run down the killer and his gang-before the body count rises again.

There's a sudden spike in murders in Philadelphia, but no one seems to mind much because the victims all seem to be lowlifes. The more Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne investigates, however, the more he gets a bad feeling-one that only gets worse when vigilante groups spring up claiming credit for some of the hits, even though Payne knows it can't be true. As the targets get bigger and events start moving out of control, Payne realizes that if he and his colleagues can't figure out who's behind this very soon, the violence could overtake them all.

For Philadelphia homicide detective Matt Payne, investigating a young woman’s murder in a Society Hill home invasion uncovers an ugly underworld - that of Mexican drug cartels and the Russian mob. Foreign girls are being smuggled in to work in the sex trade, and now some of them are dying or just disappearing. The trail leads right to Philadelphia - and Payne learns that’s not all. Teenage American girls lured from local foster homes have vanished. And the lone living witness has gone into hiding. He knows it’s got to be connected - but how?

In Philadelphia - suffering among the country's highest murder rates - the tension between the Philadelphia Police Department and its Citizens Oversight Committee has long been reaching a boiling point. That turmoil turns from bad to worse shortly after the committee begins targeting police shootings - especially those of twenty-seven-year-old Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne, the "Wyatt Earp of the Main Line" - and then the committee's combative leader is found shot dead point-blank on the front porch of his run-down Philly row house.

Having investigated his share of gruesome murders, Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne is beginning to think nothing can shock him - until the case of a young socialite's death lands on his desk. The Camilla Rose Morgan he'd known as a teenager was beautiful and brilliant - how was it possible she'd jumped to her death from her own balcony? Her brother tells Payne she'd tragically been battling a lifetime of mental demons, and there is plenty of evidence of it, but still...something just doesn't sit right.