By 1972 Detroit had earned the title of Murder Capital of America. STRESS (Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) was supposed to change that. STRESS undercover police decoy units produced instant results. As in dead young black men, a black community more outraged and aggrieved than ever before, and a series of bloody shoot-outs that reached spectacular—and sometimes tragicomic—new heights. Into the middle of a cauldron of violence and extremism steps Charlie Battle, a bright young black cop and the nephew of a former pro-wrestler.
Battle’s job is to investigate a shooting by an out-of-uniform officer in a posh society mansion that left three men dead, one of whom, Battle is sure, was an innocent victim of circumstances. Hand-picked for the job, Battle knows he’s been chosen to fail. But that doesn’t stop him from trying.
What he finds on the streets are guns, alienation, and a fugitive black revolutionary who has become so infamous the FBI will not touch him—even though he is on its most wanted list and even though the feds know exactly where he is. As the militant’s foot soldiers plan to heist the daughter of one of Detroit’s richest families, Battle is caught between armed black power and a police department that may be even more violent. He knows it’s only a matter of where the shooting will erupt next and who it’s going to kill.
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“The result is as rich and reeking a portrait of Detroit as Estleman (Edsel,
1995, etc.) has written, with violence and moral chaos threatening every
collision between the characters, and haunting most of them individually as
well, till the remarkable (and fact-based) courtroom climax. Don't look for any
mystery about which of the cast members is guilty—they all are—but enjoy this
as a peerless exercise in style, an evocation of a dirty page in urban history,
and a brutal descent into 'any civic architect's picture of hell.' ”
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Kirkus Reviews