The Restless Sleep (2005)

Between 1985 and 2004, 8,894 murders in New York City have gone unsolved. That's a whole lot of killers roaming free, buying lattes at Starbucks, and catching the latest episode of CSI and Cold Case. The majority will never be caught and most of their victims will never be mourned by the general public, but that doesn't deter the NYPD's Cold Case and Apprehension Squad. In her first true-crime outing, memoirist Stacy Horn follows these tireless detectives as they attempt to crack four unsolved homicides, one dating back to 1951. The real-life police work she chronicles is far less glamorous than the Jerry Bruckheimer version, and her occasionally obsessive reporting goes deeper into the convoluted internal politics of the NYPD than many readers will care to delve. But while The Restless Sleep hardly makes for soothing bedtime reading, Horn's gripping writing and palpable sense of outrage ensure that its narrative trail never runs cold.