This is book 13 of the "Badge of Honor" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

By Griffin and his son William E. Butterworth IV.

I've been grousing about the new books and about the collaborations, so I'm basically happy (except it means I can't give up for longer; if a lot remain bad I'll read a lot of bad books still) to say that this one isn't as superficial and the characters are more like themselves and religion isn't being waved quite so hard.

Just better written. Matt Payne doesn't go to bed with any new women in this book, and in fact passes up an opportunity to do so to remain faithful to his fiance—but it's written with him being tempted and resisting, and while he feels like a heel for even being tempted that is completely compatible with the old original books.

Looks like union thugs are going around killing people bringing in scabs, but those people are also embezzling and paying bribes and such. It complicates things, since the sources of the various attacks aren't really related.

Big political changes coming in Phildalphia, but it's less eye-bleedingly being simplisticly blamed on liberals. Corruption is targeted, which is fully compatible with my views on what's important.

The end leaves us in an interesting position: Matt thinks he's being thrown out of the police department by Carlucci, but Amanda has reconciled herself to the idea of being a policeman's husband. And Wohl and Coughlin have decided to fight Carlucci over sacrificing Payne. Matt and Amanda are discussing what he'll do, probably take an accelerated JD/MBA program he thinks. So, what happens when these two threads collide in the next book?