3rd Degree

3rd Degree is a crime novel by James Patterson and Andrew Gross, published on 1 March 2004 and the third book in the Women's Murder Club series.

The novel begins with Lindsay Boxer, a homicide detective in San Francisco, jogging through a residential street when a town house is destroyed by an explosion. She goes into the burning building to look for anybody who might still be alive, and the attack she finds sets the pattern for the case: a group calling itself August Spies has begun killing on a schedule of one every three days, and the targets are political and financial figures rather than the people they claim to be punishing. The series is built around four women who share information across their professions, a detective, a medical examiner, a reporter and a prosecutor, and this volume follows them as the killings continue and the group's demands become clearer.

Patterson wrote the book with Andrew Gross, and it follows directly from 2nd Chance. It is the third of the four novels about the four friends.