The Killing Season

Tensions explode across Los Angeles as violence ravages the city – an innocent unarmed Black man shot dead by the cops, a little girl caught in gang crossfire, an LAPD officer killed by pre-dawn gunfire in the Hollywood Hills – the first in a string of cop killings that have the force on edge.

Under the sweltering California sun, LAPD cop Tony Calvanese pulls his sweat-stained uniform collar from his neck, surveying the aftermath of these senseless killings rippling through a city primed to erupt. Protestors flood the streets, enraged eyes fixed on the police in the wake of yet more unnecessary bloodshed.

With more officers under fire, it's clear these are not random acts of violence – someone is hunting police officers, meticulously executing them one by one as revenge.

Calvanese's new partner - Ivy League rookie Paul Henderson - shifts nervously in the passenger seat, unable to forget his early morning run through Beverley Hills when he was pulled over by the cops for the color of his skin and pushed into the dirt before he could reach for his badge.

As the body count rises, Calvanese and Henderson are dispatched to stop the cop killer before he can strike again. But tensions within the force threaten to boil over. To do their job, the mismatched partners must confront ugly truths about brutality and racism that run deep. Can they find common ground? Or will the inferno raging in the streets ignite an even greater fire between them?

Skillfully exploring racial divides and what it truly means to protect and serve, The Killing Season combines the gritty realism of Michael Connelly with the social commentary of Walter Mosley – a page-turning, thought-provoking and emotional rollercoaster of a read.