Cheryl (Toni) J. (toni) reviewed on 10/22/2006 + 351 more book reviews

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In Philadelphia in the 1970s, mayoral and police department politics were a lot tougher for the city's cops than for the hoodlums and bad guys; it was the era of Frank Rizzo, the beat cop turned police commissioner turned mayor. Rizzo, who really did wear his nightstick tucked into his cummerbund at formal functions so he could respond to police dispatcher's calls, often used the cops as a tool in his political career. "The Murderers" is volume six in Griffin's popular Badge of Honor series, the fictional saga of the police force during Rizzo's fascinating tenure. Griffin knows Philly, the Philadelphia PD, and cops, and he fills his novels with vast amounts of detail as proof of that knowledge. His style sometimes even takes on the convoluted cop-speak found in police reports. He might, for example, take two pages to describe the route a character drives from Chestnut Hill to Center City. Yet, somehow, such excesses become virtues in the eyes of his readers. Griffin writes very much to a formula (he's also the author of similar series about the army and the marines), but that formula is agreeable to a large, devoted following. The faithful will be asking for "The Murderers".

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