Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
A riveting, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most elite, highly trained units of homicide detectives in the country. Los Angeles is a town of dreamers--and of those who prey on them. The scene of innumerable bizarre crimes, it is also home to a unique police unit called Homicide Special, whose mandate is to take on the toughest, most controversial, and highest-profile cases. Now acclaimed writer Miles Corwin uses his unprecedented access to this legendary unit to portray six of its cases--and capture its newest generation at work. When a call girl from Kiev dies in the line of duty, detectives Chuck Knolls and Brian McCartin seek her killer among a circle of Russian women who have been sold unwittingly into white slavery. When a gangster's daughter, brought up in Las Vegas, takes a bullet, veterans Jerry Stephens and Paul Coulter trace clues scattered across the country to one of Manhattan's wealthiest real estate magnates. A cold case is reopened; a suspicious mother-daughter drowning and a baffling rape/murder case are solved. And finally, Corwin re-creates the investigation surrounding the late Bonny Lee Bakley--a woman driven, like her city, by the desire for fame--who was allegedly murdered by her actor-husband, Robert Blake. Compulsively readable, artfully written, and surprisingly redemptive, Homicide Special offers a thrilling insider's report on some of the nation's most high-profile and complex homicides--and the extraordinary men who solve them.… (more)
User reviews
The author is scrupulously fair to the police and gives a realistic snapshot of contemporary Los Angeles with its international mix of cultures. Several of these bizarre cases prove the old saw that truth IS stranger than fiction. Corwin is one of the best at putting you at the scene without calling attention to himself. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in police work -- or good journalism.