Young Cop

Princeton, Kentucky. 1985. The only cop awake after midnight is fourteen years old.Caleb Harlen drives the graveyard shift on a phone book, badge catching the dash light, sleeves rolled twice because the uniform was never made for a boy his size. Nobody handed him the job. He just kept showing up until the badge was the only thing that made sense.Then the locks start getting cut. One clean stroke, every third Friday, a pattern only Caleb sees. Something new has come to Princeton - something that makes hands shake and hollows people out - and it's moving through a town that would rather look away. A Little League coach with a truck paid in cash. A supplier with California plates and a Polaroid camera. A folder full of a boy's careful, terrified handwriting that no adult will take seriously until it's almost too late.While a woman who runs the corner store keeps a light on every night, waiting to give him a home, Caleb builds his case alone in the dark - and learns that the hardest thing isn't catching who's guilty. It's surviving what it costs to be the one who wouldn't look away.Young Cop is a Southern noir about grief, found family, and the price of being needed too young - a small-town crime story with the ache of Mystic River and the heart of Stand By Me. Soon to be a motion picture.