Branagan — Bob Pierce

The assassination of John F. Kennedy, protests against the Vietnam war, racial unrest, baby-boomers swelling the populations of suburban towns, drugs and crime proliferating in the schools. Our world was changing. Sergeant James Branagan was an old-school cop in a small Connecticut town in those tumultuous days, dealing, too, with all of the corruption and political tides that would come with it. A man of integrity, dedicated to his community and devoted to his family, the stresses and strains of the job that often tear a cop's marriage apart along with the pressures of coping with mounting attacks on his career from without and within and a special-needs daughter, the odds were stacked tall against him. The changing attitudes of the community painted a larger and larger target on his back. The corruption and white-collar criminal enterprise of the rising new police chief fueled the flames as Branagan and the few remaining old-school, original cops were purged from the force one by one. Decades later, author Jack Walsh would return to his home town for the embattled cop's funeral, recalling a time and a place that seemed then worlds away, having transformed into something almost unrecognizable. He would meet many whose lives Branagan had touched in his career and find out for himself the incalculable cost he had paid for being the last honest cop. Bob Pierce has, in his fifth novel, explored the juxtaposition of morality and traditional American values with the ambiguity of a changing culture in a fast-paced, emotionally-charged story that bring a wistful tear to the reader's eye on one page and a pang of anger and frustration on another. Another "can't-put-it-down" page turner from author Bob Pierce.