UNDER COLOR OF LAW

The bill comes shockingly due for the serious moral compromises a rookie LAPD detective made to get his plum assignment.

Detective Trevor Finnegan is called to an Altadena hiking trail where the body of police recruit Brandon Soledad has been discovered. Like Finn, Brandon was one of the few Black candidates to be accepted into the police academy; now his death has ended his career before it’s even begun. Finn decides on the spot that the young man was killed elsewhere and dumped in the wild. The autopsy that confirms his judgment indicates that Brandon was frozen to death. Before Finn can even begin to make a list of likely suspects, he’s warned off the case by anonymous threats that almost certainly come from within his own department. Eyed with suspicion by colleagues certain that the fix was in when Finn was elevated to Robbery-Homicide and even by his old school friend Sarada Rao, whose rapist Finn beat within an inch of his life because he felt responsible for leaving her in an unsafe position, Finn is forced to work the case alone. His hard-nosed confrontations with his former training officer, Joey Garcia, and the visibly activist role his father, retired LAPD Sgt. Shaun Finnegan, has taken against the police make every cop Finn meets brush him off or worse, and his rage and guilt don’t bode well for his affair with dress designer Tori Krause. The corruption in the force is so widespread, and the hero so deeply flawed, that it’s something of a miracle when Clark finally manages to ring down the curtain.

Harrowing evidence for Spike Lee’s famous claim that everything that happens in America is about race.