Murder Finds the Suburbs

‘Two anonymous lifeless bodies lie on the hard-frozen ground alongside a small winding road in an affluent suburban town, north of the confines of New York City. The discovery of the bodies will result in an awakening of the sleepy bedroom community’s police department and one of the agency’s young, upstart police officers.’

Rocco DeMarco is a young police officer on a suburban “Bedroom Community” police department, north of New York City, who is placed in a position of Baptism by Fire.

Just days after being assigned as a patrolman to the detective division, DeMarco, along with his lieutenant, are summoned to a murder scene: two young girls are found, in trash bags that have been dumped across the street from the local high school.

The subsequent investigation presents many new, and sometimes dangerous, situations. DeMarco is new to the Detective Division in a Department that still has a reputation for bungling a previous high-profile case. Will DeMarco’s inexperience and enthusiasm cloud his awareness of the dangers he will be facing?

This case presented many challenges. What DeMarco knows is outnumbered by the things he doesn’t know; who are the victims? Where were they from? Where did the crime take place? Above all: Who did it?

Young Officer DeMarco encounters many firsts in his young career; autopsies, working the dangerous streets of the Bronx, and confronting killers who would certainly kill him next. Rocco is suddenly thrown into an investigation that involves multiple agencies, language barriers and uncooperative witnesses. Can an upstart from a small ‘upstate’ police agency handle an investigation of this magnitude?

DeMarco is hampered by fellow detectives who care little about victims and resent his doggedness. Murder’s are not supposed to happen in toney Lakeside, an affluent bedroom community in Westchester. DeMarco’s only support is his Lieutenant who knows investigative talent when he sees it and tells him, “It’s Your Case Kid.”

DeMarco has no leads and only circumstantial evidence, but finds the weak link; a dim-witted son of a Bronx social club owner. Taking advantage of his known drug involvement, and his infatuation with women, DeMarco turns the witness and his father, who knew everything, against the killer.  

The case takes on a whole new level of risk when DeMarco realizes he is hunting a homicidal, former enforcer from Castro’s Cuba, who came over on the Mariel Boat Lift in the early 80’s.

Against all odds, can an upstart investigator from suburbia get justice for two dead women on the streets of the Bronx?