Widely hailed as one of the best debut crime novels of 2003, Mission Flats is the story of a young, thoughtful small-town cop caught up in a furious big-city manhunt. It is at once a page-turning mystery, a family drama, and a vivid portrait of police life. Here are the streetcorners, courtrooms, and stationhouses; the dealmakers, thugs, and quiet heroes.

By a gleaming lake in the forests of western Maine, outside a sleepy little town called Versailles, the body of a man lies sprawled in a deserted cabin. The dead man was an elite D.A. from Boston, and his beat was that city’s toughest neighborhood: Mission Flats.

Now, for small-town police chief Ben Truman—part Maine Yankee, part student of history, and altogether a reluctant young policeman—investigating the murder will require a journey to a world of mean streets and hard bargains.

Ben joins a manhunt through Mission Flats, where cops are scrambling to find their number-one suspect: Harold Braxton, a ruthless predator targeted for prosecution by the murdered D.A. To the Boston police, he is a marked man.

But as Ben watches the shadow dance of police and suspects, he begins to voice doubts about Braxton’s guilt—especially when he uncovers a secret history of murder and retribution stretching back twenty years—to a brutal cop killing now nearly forgotten.