Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is used to murder, but lately there's been an awful lot of it in Philadelphia. A gangland shooting in a popular tourist location has left six dead, most of them innocent bystanders, and days later the body of a headless Latina turns up in the Schuykill River. Everybody assumes they're not related, but Payne can't shake the hunch that there's something more to it--and that hunch leads him far from the City of Brotherly...

Philadelphia cold case detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano search for the killer of a runaway find drowned in a tenement apartment when they receive a confession on the tipline.

"There's a sudden spike in murders in Philadelphia, but no one seems to mind much, because the victims are street thugs and lowlifes. But as Homicide sergeant Matt Payne starts looking under the right rocks, he gets a feeling there's more going on than just bad guys burning one another..." -- inside front cover.

Nothing will ever be the same again . . .

In the heart of Philadelphia’s badlands, Homicide Detectives Byrne and Balzano are called out to a particularly chilling crime scene. Once the pillar of the neighbourhood, an abandoned church has become a killing room. At first it looks like a random act of violence. But then a second body is found, and a third. Each crime scene more disturbing than the last, each murder more brutal.

...

After the sudden deaths of his parents, narcotics detective Doyle Carrick bides his time at an inherited house in rural Pennsylvania, where he falls in love with an organic farmer who is being pressured by a mysterious development company and violent drug dealers.

"Three generations torn apart--by bullets fired fifty years ago ... Philadelphia, 1965: Two street cops--one black, one white--are gunned down in a corner bar. One of the fallen officers, Stan Walczak, leaves behind a 12-year-old boy, Jimmy. Philadelphia, 1995: Homicide detective Jim Walczak learns that his father's alleged killer, Terrill Lee Stanton, has been sprung from prison. Jim stalks the ex-con, hoping to finally learn the truth. Philadelphia,...