The Savage City - Paperback

by T. J. English (Author)

"T.J. English has the mastered the hybrid narrative art form of social history and underworld thriller. The Savage City is a truly gripping read filled with unexpected twists and turns."
--Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge

In The Savage City, T.J. English, author of the New York Times bestselling blockbuster Havana Nocturne, takes readers back to a frightening place in a dark time of violence and urban chaos: New York City in the 1960s and early '70s. As he did in his acclaimed true crime masterwork, The Westies, English focuses on the rot on the Big Apple in this stunning tale of race, murder, and a generation on the edge--as he interweaves the real-life sagas of a corrupt cop, a militant Black Panther, and an innocent young African American man framed by the NYPD for a series of crimes, including a brutal and sensational double murder.

Front Jacket

A finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

On August 28, 1963--the day Martin Luther King Jr. declared I have a dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial--two young white women were murdered in their Manhattan apartment. The so-called Career Girls Murders case sent ripples of fear throughout the city as police scrambled to find the killer. But it also marked the start of a ten-year saga of fear, racial violence, and turmoil in the city--as events progressed from the Harlem riots of the mid-1960s to the Panther Twenty-one trials and police corruption hearings of the early 1970s. The Savage City explores this traumatic decade through the stories of three very different men: George Whitmore Jr., an innocent black teenager coerced into confessing to murder; Bill Phillips, a brazenly crooked officer whose public testimony sparked the largest scandal in NYPD history; and Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a founding member of New York's Black Panther Party, caught in the crossfire as the conflict between the Panthers and the police escalated into open warfare.

--Publishers Weekly

Back Jacket

A finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

On August 28, 1963--the day Martin Luther King Jr. declared "I have a dream" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial--two young white women were murdered in their Manhattan apartment. The so-called Career Girls Murders case sent ripples of fear throughout the city as police scrambled to find the killer. But it also marked the start of a ten-year saga of fear, racial violence, and turmoil in the city--as events progressed from the Harlem riots of the mid-1960s to the Panther Twenty-one trials and police corruption hearings of the early 1970s. The Savage City explores this traumatic decade through the stories of three very different men: George Whitmore Jr., an innocent black teenager coerced into confessing to murder; Bill Phillips, a brazenly crooked officer whose public testimony sparked the largest scandal in NYPD history; and Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a founding member of New York's Black Panther Party, caught in the crossfire as the conflict between the Panthers and the police escalated into open warfare.