Main description:

The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted fence one icy night in 1995 knew soon after that they had made a terrible mistake. The badge and handgun under Cox's bloodied parka proved he was not a black gang member but a plainclothes cop chasing the same murder suspect his assailants were. Officer Kenny Conley, who pursued and apprehended the suspect while Cox was being beaten, was then wrongfully convicted by federal prosecutors of lying when he denied witnessing the attack on his brother officer. Both Cox and Conley were native Bostonians, each dedicating his life to service with the Boston Police Department. But when they needed its support, they were heartlessly and ruthlessly abandoned.

A remarkable work of investigative journalism, The Fence tells the shocking true story of the attack and its aftermath—and exposes the lies and injustice hidden behind a "blue wall of silence."

Review quote:

“Jolting, nightmarish and potent, this true cop yarn bests any bogus reality show or overblown tabloid tale with its hardboiled spin.”

Short description/annotation:

“A monumental account of an urban travesty….[It] has all the earmarks of a classic.”
—Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter Island

Dick Lehr’s The Fence, subtitled, “A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide,” is a shocking true story of racism, brutality, official lies and negligence, when the truth about the savage beating of black plainclothes policeman by white officers was hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.”  Respected journalist Lehr, winner of the Hancock Award, the Loeb Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and bestselling author of Black Mass and Judgment Ridge, sheds a brilliant light on all aspects of this powerful, disturbing event and its aftermath.