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A Good Month for Murder    by Del Quentin Wilber Amazon.com order for
Good Month for Murder
by Del Quentin Wilber
Order:  USA  Can
Picador, 2017 (2016)
Hardcover, Softcover, CD, e-Book
* * *   Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth

Del Quentin Wilber's A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad reads like a very good mystery, concentrating on a police force and its important work. Of course, the reader assumes that the story is fiction and that Wilber has used real policemen to understand the finer points of police work.

Wrong! This excellent work is non-fiction. Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series, calls it 'Superb-one of the best real-life cop books ever written'. I have to agree. Wilber writes it as it is. As members of the public that count on police forces to keep us and our families safe in our homes and on the streets, we are able to look at police work from the eyes of the men and women who give us that feeling of safety that we all take for granted. And we learn that February 2013 was a good month for murder in suburban Washington, D.C..

We read of and understand the 'everyday challenges, the mounting pressures and frustrations, and experience the occasional eureka moments- up close on gritty streets, in neighborhoods gripped by fresh and terrible crimes that are all too real'. So comments author Hampton Sides, as Wilber shares with readers a very busy month for the homicide unit in Prince George's County.

You may look at your police a little differently now that you've read of the real lives lived by those who make it safe for us to walk our streets and sleep at night. The statistics quoted in A Good Month for Murder could easily curl your toes. Readers only learn what a policeman or woman faces every day. They and their families live it. My father-in-law was a sergeant of detectives on a police force in Philadelphia's suburbs. I knew he had a different slant on life than I did. Now I understand why.

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