The Weight of the Shield

Kat Booker Mysteries #2

by Elliot Stone

In a city where justice is for sale, some rules were meant to be broken.

Internal Affairs Detective Kat Booker knows the cost of a dirty badge. She’s built her career on a single, uncompromising principle: hold the line, no matter who is standing on the other side.

When she’s assigned to investigate Officer Jesse Martinez for evidence tampering in a high-profile murder, the case looks like an open-and-shut betrayal. The politics are clear: bury Martinez fast and move on. But in the rain-slicked streets of Tideview, nothing is ever that simple.

The victim was a building inspector digging into the dark heart of the Tideview Reclamation Group—a corporate titan with enough muscle to make inconvenient people disappear. The prime suspect is a board member’s son who acts like the law doesn't apply to him. And Martinez? He isn’t acting like a guilty man. He’s acting like a man who knows a storm is coming and is trying to keep the city from drowning.

Kat joined IA to be better than the corrupt system that got her father killed. Now, with a forty-eight-hour clock ticking and the department turning its back, she faces a choice: follow the manual that failed her family, or trust her gut and shatter every rule in the book.

In the Bay Area’s shadow, the heaviest weight isn’t the badge—it’s the truth.

128 pages, Paperback

Published February 8, 2026

About the author

I write police procedural mysteries where the obvious answer doesn’t always hold up. Currently working on the Kat Booker Mysteries. The deeper she digs, the worse it gets—for the suspects, the victims, and sometimes for her.

Check out my books here: ElliotStoneUnchained.com

I live and write in Fallbrook, California, tucked among rolling hills with my wife Ruth and our joyful chaos of kids, dogs, chickens, and rabbits. When I'm not chained to the keyboard, I'm usually out in the vineyard pretending I know what I'm doing with wine—or getting thoroughly outplayed at chess.

Reviews

[Arnar Vik · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old fashioned detective novel - in a good way. I really like the moral aspect of the story: should I go by the book or follow my moral compass to find justice? What I miss is get to know the characters better. Kat's father-daughter complex and her cat, Sherlock, is about it for the main character. Maria, even more mysterious. This does not hamper the plot, though, cause the investigation is fast paced and interresting. The barmaid, Babs, seems a little cartoonish, but Jesse and Julian are great characters in the story. There are a lot of questions remaining after finishing this book, but that is ok. I'll just have to pick up the follow-up. I really want to get to know these people behind the shields.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kat Booker works in Internal Affairs and has been called in to examine a case involving Officer Jesse Martinez. She knows Jesse to be a good officer, so she cannot make sense of the inconsistencies she finds when examining his statement. The book follows Kat as she investigates the case and the possible corruption taking place in her town. A good story that kept me reading and trying to figure out how they would come to a resolution.
I picked this up because I have received an ARC of the next book in the series, and I wanted to get some background on the characters.