Why would you kill your neighbour?

Based on the best part of a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, this groundbreaking work of reportage takes us onto the streets, inside the homes and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic.

Through the gripping story of one particular murder – of an eighteen-year-old boy named Bryant Tennelle, gunned down one evening in spring for no apparent reason – and of its investigation by a brilliant, ferociously driven detective – a blond, surfer-turned-cop named John Skaggs – it reveals the true origins of such violence, explodes the myths surrounding policing and race and shows that the only way to reverse the cycle of violence is with justice.