Just as with his remarkable military novels, millions of readers have been captured by the rich characters and vivid realism of Griffin's police dramas. "Griffin has the knack," writes The Philadelphia Inquirer. "He sets his novel before you in short, fierce, stop-for-nothing scenes. Before you know it, you've gobbled it up."
Now, in Final Justice, Detective Matt Payne-newly promoted to Sergeant and assigned to Homicide-finds himself in the middle of three major assignments. The first, a fatal shooting at a fast-food restaurant, seems simple, but rapidly becomes complicated. The second begins complicated and only gets more so, as Payne becomes involved with a local guru who has fled the country, leaving behind the mummified body of his girlfriend in a trunk. And, as if that weren't enough, the self-absorbed star of a series of improbable police movies comes into town-and it is his presence that will complicate Payne's life most of all.
Filled with color and detail and plots as real as the headlines, this is a riveting novel of the men and women who put their lives on the line, from the cop on the beat to the commissioner himself.
Amazon.com Review
That there's an Establishment in any big city cop shop is no surprise, but the pols, police, press, and prosecutors who hang out together in W.E.B. Griffin's Philadelphia are so tightly connected that there's hardly any room to breathe in this Badge of Honor thriller. While a couple of minor characters from outside this old-boysοΏ½ network make a few cursory appearances, plus the obligatory perp, it's mostly an inside story about golden boy Matt Payne, Main Line scion and third generation cop who's just been promoted to Homicide, and his mentors, friends, and family. The perp is a clever psychopath who rapes and murders his way across country while he's buying and selling exotic cars. Griffin fills in the story with plenty of carefully detailed department procedures in this newest in one of his many bestselling series (Honor Bound, Men at War, Brotherhood of War, The Corps). Justice triumphs and, of course, there's plenty of hero worship and not a flawed cop on the force, which won't surprise or displease the author's legion of true blue fans. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
If God is truly in the details, then Griffin must be the pope of police procedurals. Want to know what paragraph of the Pennsylvania Criminal Code you violate if you use a flashing blue light attached to your car to get through traffic? Or what the chances are of a patrolman or detective passing the Philadelphia Police Department's exam for promotion to sergeant? Or what happens to the badge worn on the chest of an officer killed in action, after the funeral? All of this-and much, much more-is revealed in the eighth data-heavy entry in Griffin's Badge of Honor series (The Murderers, The Investigators, etc.). What's even more amazing is that all these factoids don't slow down the story's considerable momentum for a minute. Nor do they keep Griffin's gritty cops from convincing us of their individuality. Matt Payne, a detective with the Philadelphia police force, has just been promoted and transferred to Homicide. The cases he gets during his first few days at the post are a rich mix of mayhem entangling all strata of Philadelphia society: an apparently simple shooting in a fast food outlet that turns out to be almost unsolvable; a savage rape and murder with some serious anti-cop political overtones; an extradition case involving a fugitive murderer from France; and, for comic relief, the supervision of a visiting movie star who wants to make his police pictures more authentic. What holds it all together is Griffin's infectious respect for and fascination with police work.
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