Internal Affairs

"A SUPERIOR WRITER AND A WONDERFUL STORYTELLER." -The New York Times

This gritty story of a cop's murder, a tough cop's dogged investigation, and a hot and sizzling New York summer reveals Jerry Oster at his best. On most cop novels, movies, and tv shows, the Internal Affairs guy are the bad guys of the police world. But that is not how the IA cops see themselves. To Joe Cullen and his fellow IA officers, they are the good guys who weed out the corrupt and criminal among the regular members of the force. Crime journalist Jerry Oster knew many IA cops personally and presents their side of the story in a brilliant, suspenseful series of novels detailing their work, their problems and the deadly dangers they face.

"One of the foremost writers in the genre." -Baltimore Sun

The action in the first book of the Joe Cullen series begins when somebody torches an abandoned uptown hotel called the Raleigh -and sixteen homeless squatters die in the blaze. Soon after, somebody puts a bullet through Chuck Story's neat Izod shirt, right above the alligator, and adds a few grisly touches to the crime. The Raleigh fire is news, but Chuck Story's murder is a screaming headline-because young multimillionaire Chuck Story was the new Police Commissioner of New York City. Sergeant Joe Cullen, Internal Affairs Unit, is part of the department cops hate: he polices the police, he judges the judges, he arrests his own. He and his partner Neil Zimmerman are among the detectives assigned to investigate the Commissioner's murder. It's an internal affair in more ways than one for Cullen: he and Story were boyhood friends, and the prime suspect is another friend, a man who has devoted his life to helping the homeless. As the city simmers in the hottest summer in recent memory, Joe Cullen uncovers traces of corruption in very high places-information so explosive that people would kill to keep it secret. Now just being around Cullen becomes risky business-and those who just might get killed are his partners; his lover, city reporter Ann Jones; and his old neighborhood sweetheart, Story's sister, now a world-famous movie actress. Before it's over Joe Cullen will find his principles and his loyalties put to the test. He'll discover what happens when the thin blue line between law and disorder blurs, and how far cops will go to protect their own. He'll also discover how deeply buried are the secrets of even intimate friends. Realistic in its portrayal of a city incandescent with heat and ablaze with passion, gut-wrenching in its depiction of a cop determined to do what's right, and riveting in its exposure of scandals and corruption, Internal Affairs is a compelling police thriller by a novelist with a reporter's eye and integrity...who tells a story straight and from the heart.

JERRY OSTER was a reporter for UPI, Reuters, and the New York Daily News. Two of his novels, Sweet justice and Saint Mike, have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review