She took an oath to uphold the law, but oaths can be broken.Chicago PD Detective Shannon Rourke is falling apart, but by now, she's used to it. Her misfortune, however, has infected the people she loves. Her boyfriend worries she's concealing a dark secret, and his daughter is tormented by memories of a deranged serial killer--who targeted the girl because of Shannon.She needs a break from work before she snaps, but her problems have to wait when she's called to a puzzling crime scene on Chicago's deadly West Side. With a killer dropping fresh corpses every day, she fights to keep her demons shackled while she goes on the hunt. A single misstep could turn her misfortune into deadly tragedy--not only for herself, but for the family she loves.

The 1968 Democratic Convention, best known for police brutality against demonstrators, has been relegated to a dark place in American historical memory. Battleground Chicago ventures beyond the stereotypical image of rioting protestors and violent cops to reevaluate exactly how—and why—the police attacked antiwar activists at the convention. Working from interviews with eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene, Frank Kusch uncovers the other side of the story of ’68, deepening our understanding of a turbulent decade. “Frank Kusch’s compelling account of the clash between Mayor Richard Daley’s men in blue and anti-war rebels reveals why the 1960s was such a painful era for many Americans. . . . to his great credit, [Kusch] allows ‘the pigs’ to speak up for themselves.”—Michael Kazin “Kusch’s history of white Chicago policemen and the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a solid addition to a growing literature on the cultural sensibility and political perspective of the conservative white working class in the last third of the twentieth century.”—David Farber, Journal of American History