The Restless Sleep [Paperback]

'Riveting, moving and haunting...you come away with the deepest respect for these true-life heroes' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'These cases haunted Horn, and because of her masterful storytelling, they are likely to haunt her readers too' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Intimate, thrilling and sometimes chilling true story of the extraordinary NYPD unit whose task is to solve the unsolvable.

There is no statute of limitations on murder. It is one crime you pay for – but first you must be caught. And in New York City, thousands of murders remain unsolved . . . It was while working as a volunteer post 9/11 that New York-based writer and broadcaster Stacy Horn first learned of the existence of the NYPD’s ‘Cold Case and Apprehension Squad’. This small but elite unit has but a single purpose: to pursue murder cases that have, for whatever reason – the passage of time, lack of evidence, loss of investigative momentum – gone ‘cold’. These are the deaths that have been forgotten, that languish in dusty filing cabinets in precinct HQ basements, some dating back over fifty years. The Cold Case team’s job is to reach into the past and rescue the victims from oblivion, to answer the questions ‘who were they?’, ‘what happened to them?’ and ‘who did this to them?’, to lay their ghosts to rest . . . Given unprecedented access to the squad, Stacy Horn works alongside the talented, indefatigable, sometimes ill-at-ease and all-too human detectives as they investigated four cases from inception to resolution. An enthralling chronicle of the two years she spent with the team, The Restless Sleep is both a compelling, insider’s view of the real-life subculture of crime-solving – from its tangled history, the politics and bureaucracy to the science, the emotional and physical toll, and the lucky breaks – and a singular exploration of human nature itself. Intimate, revealing and exciting, it promises to become a classic of true crime.

STACY HORN grew up on Long Island, has degrees in Fine Arts and Telecommunications and lives in New York, where she is a celebrated writer, broadcaster, commentator and founder of the online community, Echo. Cyberville is her much acclaimed account of this community.