Author Jan Brogan

Shortlisted for a
2022 Anthony Award
and a
2021 Agatha award

The Combat Zone is a riveting account of a brutal murder, race, two flawed trials and the not so delicate dance between justice and revenge. It tells the story of a talented Harvard football player whose life was cut short by a brutal murder that ultimately changed the city.

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Jan Brogan has been a journalist for more than thirty years, working as a correspondent for the Boston Globe, a staff writer for the Worcester Telegram and the Providence Journal, where she won the Gerald Loeb award for distinguished business writing.

She is the award-winning author of four mysteries, Final Copy, Confidential Source, Yesterday’s Fatal, and Teaser. Transactional Pictures, (Steven Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman) purchased the rights to A Confidential Source, which is currently under development for a television series.

… heart-wrenching, jaw-dropping… It’s the best form of narrative nonfiction…
—Craig Sandler, Statehouse News

Brogan’s background as a journalist shows in her careful reporting and historical context…
—Providence Journal

A great strength of Brogan’s book is the broad context that she provides—one of overlapping divisions of race, class, and geography—to make sense of how the legal proceedings unfolded…
—Joseph Nevins, Dig Boston

The careful, meticulous research, the compassionate yet balanced tone, and the compelling narrative thrust make this book read almost like a legal or crime thriller.
—Author Stephanie Schorow

[A] suspenseful narrative into a fascinating history of a city in tumult and how that tumult helped produce opposite verdicts in trials only two and a half years apart… a real page turner.
—NYT bestselling author B.A. Shapiro

The Combat Zone effectively moves forward the conversation on race, highlighting the tumultuous time of busing in Boston and the racial strife that it caused…
—Author Christopher Daley

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