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A true crime classic which was the inspiration for TV's "The Wire". Simon was the first reporter to gain unlimited access to the Baltimore homicide unit, and his book is both a compelling account of their casework, and an investigation into our culture of violence.
Synopsis
The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the cente of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of men confronted by the darkest of American visions. This book presents an account of casework and an investigation into our culture of violence.
Book Details
Publisher:
CANONGATE BOOKS
Publication Date:
04-Jun-2009
ISBN:
9781847673121
Guardian review
Homicide
Vera Rule the guardian Fri 29 May 2009
Back in 1991 when this was first published in the US, David Simon was a police reporter on leave of absence from the Baltimore Sun; the book, his compression of a year in the work of the city's homicide unit, has the size, heft and moral weight of a 19th-century novel. Barry Levinson made a television series of it, although the tone and tenor of the book - and certain of its setpiece scenes - are closer to Simon's own later cop series, The Wire. So reading it now gave me an odd sense of time dislocation, that events and characters I loved from The Wire actually dated to the post-industrial port in 1988, after the last great recession, just at the arrival of crack cocaine and way before cellphones, satnav and people-trafficking of Moldavian whores. Some of his cops had begun their careers back in the racist force of the 1960s, and all must now be retired gents pottering at home improvements in the suburbs; life now for the redundant black citizenry of the projects and row houses must be worse than then. An extraordinary book.
