by Jason Ramaker

Jim Kellers just graduated from the police academy with aspirations to be a police officer. All he has to do is successfully complete seventeen weeks of training on the streets.

Randy Sutherland is the police officer assigned to Jim's field training. His job is to teach Jim to survive on the streets, or terminate him if he can't learn to survive on his own. Along the way, Randy will have to protect Jim from the endless pranks police officers so dearly love to play on rookies.

Manny Brand will be Jim's biggest test. An escaped convict with a U.S. Marshal hot on his trail, Manny will stop at nothing to gain his freedom. And that includes killing cops. “I've already killed one cop. In Texas that means the electric chair, so what's to stop me from killing a few more?”

A neophyte cop squares off against a criminal super-predator in this absorbing police drama. First-time novelist Ramaker, a ten-year police veteran, has a sure feel for police procedural. Indeed, the narrative almost becomes a police tutorial, as Jim struggles to master the surprisingly difficult task of following a suspect and discovers the hard way the wisdom of maintaining a 'six-foot-reactionary-gap' between himself and civilians. Through Jim's fumbling efforts to learn the ropes, Ramaker offers a convincingly low-key take on the psychological complexities of law enforcement. A gripping, well-observed cop thriller.