Some might see your tendency to schedule your life around episodes of Cold Case and CSI as an obsession with the gory minutiae of brutal crimes and the twisted minds of the sickos who commit them.

And that’s wrong why?

Put down the remote control and pick up a book. The latest addition to the homicide genre comes between two hard, cold covers. The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City’s Cold Case Squad, by Stacy Horn, tells the true story of the NYPD detectives who investigate the city’s most challenging murder cases.

In New York, nearly 9,000 murders from just the last twenty years remain mysteries. Horn got unprecedented access to the elite squad of experts whose job it is to solve these “unsolvable” crimes, and she provides a gripping, sometimes gruesome, behind-the-scenes look at four cases (a brutal, drug-related hit on a married couple, a 14-year-old girl stomped to death, a cop killed with a meat hook and his own gun, a young wife strangled in her bedroom), the brilliant detectives who crack them, and the politics, protocols, and personalities of the people who’ve inspired your favorite shows.

The result: a compulsively readable page-turner that’s as riveting as anything on TV — the perfect way to feed your insatiable appetite for drama.

And a much-needed break from those six-hour, Sunday afternoon Law & Order: SVU marathons.


Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.