Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

Description

'A masterpiece' - Martin Amis 'The best book about homicide detectives by an American writer' - Norman Mailer Based on a year on the killing streets of Baltimore, David Simon's true crime masterpiece reveals a city few will ever experience. Day in day out citizens are shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the centre of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world.

David Simon is an author, journalist, producer and script writer and is best known as the creator of HBO's Peabody Award-winning series The Wire. His first book, the international bestseller Homicide, won the Edgar Award and the Anthony Award and became the basis for the NBC award-winning drama. His second book, The Corner: A Year in the Life of An Inner-City Neighbourhood, co-authored with Edward Burns, was made into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries. Simon also co-created the HBO series Generation Kill with Ed Burns, and Treme with Eric Overmyer. He lives in Baltimore.

* A masterpiece ... Simon has exceptional literary gifts of eye and ear. Few novelists have written so well about the corrosiveness of the modern American city -- MARTIN AMIS * David Simon has single-handedly raised the bar for writing about crime, crime-fighting and the messy and imprecise business of justice to new and nearly unreachable levels ... a work of tremendous ambition which made everything in the genre to follow irrelevant -- ANTHONY BOURDAIN * True genius Sunday Times * A hard-nosed classic GQ * An extraordinary book Guardian * Brilliant ... desolate, sharp, poetic and passionate Financial Times * The best book about homicide detectives by an American writer -- NORMAN MAILER * A staggering work that is almost impossible to put down ... a gripping depiction of America's culture of violence ... Simon conjures up his subjects' individual personalities in three-dimensional detail. The detectives leap off these pages ... A raw, revelatory and utterly real account of life and death in Baltimore Metro * The real delight is the discovery of Simon's perfect ear for dialogue; his masterful construction and pacing; and his empathy for his occasionally brutal but nevertheless inspirational subjects Observer * Simon does an extraordinary job of getting under the skin and into the minds of the police officers New York Times Book Review * A remarkable psychological and personal picture of 18 men labouring under immense pressure in traumatic circumstances ... it is not just a majestic piece of reporting, it demonstrates Simon's instinctive ability to identify how the political and psychological interact ... It reads like a thriller as he takes you through the desperate world of inner city West and East Baltimore, slaying by slaying Daily Telegraph * A reporter who keeps his wits about him ... A very good book The New Yorker * Homicide is as intense a work of observation as you're likely ever to find, studded with Simon's caustic, wry and suspicious personality, as well as the ability to portray people as they truly are, usually a complicated shade of grey Herald * Simon has captured the poetry of the meanest streets Los Angeles Times * Homicide is a beautifully-written, almost poetic observation of a desperately harrowing subject and Simon deserves the highest praise for going to the darkest places of the underbelly of the American dream and coming out with a gripping account of what it is like to live and work there Tribune * Brushes away the accretions of myth to reveal the banality of crime ... it's a sober, unsurprised account of the desperately sad lives of people who commit most crimes and a quiet testimonial to the people who clear up the mess Word Magazine * Remarkable ... A True Crime Classic ... a journalistic masterpiece of a brutal, bloody, bewildering year in the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit Associated Press * Certainly one of the most engrossing police procedural mystery books ever written, not only because the crimes and plots and personalities are real, but because Simon is a terrific writer who has mastered the necessities and nuances of his material Newsday * The world of urban violence has never been so well portrayed, nor has the day-to-day craft of the detective Chicago Tribune * Simon followed a group of Baltimore detectives through a year on the mean streets. The resulting book is a hefty volume, giving Simon cope for a huge amount of detail and it's this, I think, that makes it such compulsive reading. How the detectives work - the crime they dace, the casual murders, the hopeless lives - all seen through Simon's eyes and those of the detectives he follows so closely Publishing News * A frank, insightful, and meticulously detailed look at detectives and their work San Francisco Chronicle * An amazingly frank and often hilarious tribute to homicide detectives everywhere ... Simon has taken the art of covering cops to a new high Washington Times