Busted

When Benny Martinez walks into the offices of the Philadelphia Daily News in 2008 to speak with reporter Wendy Ruderman, the paper is on the brink of bankruptcy. What he tells Wendy and her colleague Barbara Laker is too shocking to ignore: his career as a confidential informant for a member of the Philadelphia Police Department's narcotics squad has drawn him into a web of corruption, and now Benny is afraid for his life.

Busted is Ruderman and Laker's riveting account of their investigation into the acts committed by powerful rogue members of the narcotics squad. By dint of perseverance, ingenuity, and good old shoe-leather reporting, the women unraveled a tapestry of lies. Starting with the discovery of fabricated search warrants, they soon find that the scandal encompasses a systematic looting of immigrant-owned businesses and allegations of brutal sexual assault.

When Ruderman and Laker produce a devastating series of articles that blows the lid off the scandal, they not only win the fight for justice. They also win a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, an unthinkable triumph for two city reporters at a beleaguered local paper.

A reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News, Wendy Ruderman has worked at several media outlets, including the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, WHYY-TV and WHYY-FM, the Trenton Times, the Associated Press, and the Bergen Record.

Barbara Laker has worked for several newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dallas Times Herald, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She began working at the Philadelphia Daily News in 1993 and has since been a general assignment reporter, an assistant city editor, and an investigative reporter.