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Homicide A Year on the Killing Streets David Simon 9780805080759 Books

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Homicide A Year on the Killing Streets David Simon 9780805080759 Books

In the opening scene of the classic HBO series "The Wire" a Baltimore homicide detective interviews the witness to a seemingly senseless murder of a teenager in the street and wants to know why the victim's street name was "Snot Boogie" and why he was shot. Reading "The Wire" producer David Simon's journal of a year spent with the Baltimore homicide department when he was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, I was certain that scene was so real it had to be in the book somewhere. And it was, toward the end.
Simon was attuned to life on the gritty, city streets of Baltimore with an ear for the argot unlike any other producer of a TV crime show or crime writer. It showed in the TV series "Homicide: Life on the Streets," "The Corner," and lastly his masterpiece, "The Wire," and it shows in this pull-no-punches book. The senseless killings, the frustration of the detectives when confronted with a stone-cold "who-dun-it" they knew would never get solved, the anger when obviously guilty people they had arrested went free after trial ... it's all here, and more. As I read this book, I could see the models for the characters who appeared in the TV shows (I didn't even need to see the photos of the actors playing these models to figure out who they were) being developed. It isn't easy to make non-fiction a gripping read, but David Simon makes it look easy.


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Homicide A Year on the Killing Streets David Simon 9780805080759 Books Reviews

To say that David Simon's book HOMICIDE A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS is iconic would be a bit of an understatement. It is the recipient of the 1992 Edgar Award (an award created by the Mystery Writers of America) and has spawned not one but TWO television shows HOMICIDE LIFE ON THE STREETS and THE WIRE, both of which are critically acclaimed and the latter which is a favorite of many noteworthy people, including President Barack Obama. But what is it about the book that endears it to true crime fans and that makes it a prime candidate for television shows?

I'd only heard of HOMICIDE and THE WIRE in passing, and only after I was halfway through the book did I start to watch the former. I picked up HOMICIDE because it came highly recommended as research material for how criminal investigations work and how police officers act, think, and feel. I bought the book when I was in Baghdad back in 2008, and it's been sitting on my shelf since then. Only when I decided it was time to pursue my goal of writing a cop thriller did I finally dust it off the shelf and crack it open.

My only regret is that I didn't pick it up sooner.

HOMICIDE is full of dark humor, moments of redemption, and gut-wrenching instances that make you simultaneously question your faith in humanity and give thanks that such men stand ready to bring the perpetrators to justice. For me, three detectives stood out Donald Worden, the veteran of the squad who would haze the younger detectives and often ask for a quarter (when this is explained at the end of the book, it's a real, "Oh! NOW I get it!" moment); Tom Pellegrini, the new guy fresh from the mayor's protection detail, who's slammed with a real whodunit out the gate, and a heinous one at that the rape and murder of young Latonya Wallace; and Harry Edgerton, a rare black detective that hails from New York, operates as a lone wolf, and despite his many enemies on the force, undeniably produces results. There were often times where I forgot I was reading a work of nonfiction, as the characters enraptured me better than many fictional works I had read.

Simon's prose is top notch. It's tight, gritty, and spurs the reader forward. Most importantly, it's unadulterated the detectives themselves requested very few changes, and the Baltimore Police Department's review yielded no changes. The best feature of the prose is that it's real. You can tell that while it may enthrall like the best thriller, this is real life. These are crimes that actually occurred to people, and these are the men who deal with death on a regular basis, dispassionately facing death and working in it to find the truth.

Hands down, HOMICIDE is a must-read for any fan of the true crime genre, or for those looking to see how real detective work is done. And as the closing remarks from Terry McLarney state, not much has changed since that year on the killing streets.
As a huge fan of The Wire (I've watched the series through at least 5 times), I can't believe I only read this just now. This book is probably my favorite narrative nonfiction book of all time now, along with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It is written much like a novel, with engaging stories and characters throughout.

The best part is that, like real life, not all of the storylines get neatly tied off in a bow. Just like life, politics dictates that resources are shifted from one case that has gone cold to the next hot case.

The bits about interrogation are also amazing, tackling interview techniques used by cops, discussion around Miranda warnings and the 5th Amendment, and how cops have to ork around these limitations.

Really awesome stuff. If you have ever been interested in Law & Order, The Wire, Radley Balko, or issues of police brutality or effectiveness, or if you have ever lived in an American city, or in America, I consider this a must-read. Do it!
I'm perpetually trying to get back into reading, and for some reason, I settled on this book to do it sometime last year. Maybe it's because I'm a criminal defense lawyer and I wanted to see how the other side lives. Who knows.

After I started, I could barely put this book down. I have no idea how Simon managed to get as much access to the police department as he did, but it was an extraordinarily revealing look at how homicide detectives operate. Not just the investigation of cases, either (although that is fascinating in and of itself). The politics of a big-city cop shop - the chain of command, the objectives, the cases which are deemed important versus those that are not.

It's not going to be for anyone. There's graphic stuff here. The book takes you to some very grim places. After all, it's a book about murder police. But if police interest you, if homicide interests you, or if you just want to see what life would be like as a detective, read this. You won't regret it.

(And I defy you to read this and then not start watching The Wire, one of Simon's television series having to do with crime in Baltimore.)
In the opening scene of the classic HBO series "The Wire" a Baltimore homicide detective interviews the witness to a seemingly senseless murder of a teenager in the street and wants to know why the victim's street name was "Snot Boogie" and why he was shot. Reading "The Wire" producer David Simon's journal of a year spent with the Baltimore homicide department when he was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, I was certain that scene was so real it had to be in the book somewhere. And it was, toward the end.
Simon was attuned to life on the gritty, city streets of Baltimore with an ear for the argot unlike any other producer of a TV crime show or crime writer. It showed in the TV series "Homicide Life on the Streets," "The Corner," and lastly his masterpiece, "The Wire," and it shows in this pull-no-punches book. The senseless killings, the frustration of the detectives when confronted with a stone-cold "who-dun-it" they knew would never get solved, the anger when obviously guilty people they had arrested went free after trial ... it's all here, and more. As I read this book, I could see the models for the characters who appeared in the TV shows (I didn't even need to see the photos of the actors playing these models to figure out who they were) being developed. It isn't easy to make non-fiction a gripping read, but David Simon makes it look easy.