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.
David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and his remarkable book is both a compelling account of casework and an investigation into our culture of violence. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator nearing the end of his career; Harry Edgerton, an iconoclastic black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year's most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.
The true genius of [his] work is its scope...Homicide moves beyond individual victims to tell the stories of those touched by their deaths. By staring deep into the eyes of the departed, Simon reveals the mysteries of the living.
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.
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 MagazineA 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. *****
MetroThis brilliant book...[is] desolate, sharp, poetic and passionate...Simon alternates between black humour and moments of bleakness, and the restlessness of the violence that lies underneath it all.
Financial TimesHomicide 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 gray.
HeraldThe 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.
ObserverAn extraordinary book.
Vera Rule, GuardianA hard-nosed classic of modern crime reportage.
GQHomicide flows with the episodic drive of the best fiction, but Simon is too good a reporter to miss the real stories. ... Simon's genius is that through his cops he tells the victims' story. The picture is overpowering. ... Homicide is a 'non-fiction' to rank with Mailer's Executioner's Song or Capote's In Cold Blood, dissecting an entire failed city, and shining a light on the shadows haunting an entire country.
Michael Carson, SpectatorAn amazing piece of dramatic reportage...the access Simon enjoyed is incredible and he records everything he sees with vivid brilliance. He doesn't miss a thing and his descriptive prose brings to extraordinary life every rank squadroom, street corner and murder scene he is scrupulous witness to.
Allan Jones, UncutA 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 AmisThe world of urban violence has never been so well portrayed, nor has the day-to-day craft of the detective.
Chicago TribuneCertainly 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.
NewsdaySimon has captured the poetry of the meanest streets.
Los Angeles TimesA reporter who keeps his wits about him...A very good book.
The New YorkerSimon does an extraordinary job of getting under the skin and into the minds of the police officers.
New York Times Book ReviewThe best book about homicide detectives by an American writer.
Norman MailerRemarkable...A True Crime Classic...a journalistic masterpiece of a brutal, bloody, bewildering year in the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit.
Associated PressDavid 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. Like the WIRE, which was easily the finest dramatic series in the history of television, a work of tremendous ambition which made everything in the genre to follow irrelevent.
Tony BourdainSimon 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 face, the casual murders, the hopeless lives - all seen through Simon's eyes and those of the detectives he follows so closely.
Homicide became the inspiration behind the TV series
The Wire, which I've not seen, but who needs fiction when factual writing is as good as this?
Publishing NewsVirtually ignored by TV schedulers and audiences in the UK, David Simon's uncompromising crime drama 'The Wire' has fan a devoted fan base on DVD in September. At the same time Canongate bring us a new UK edition of the book that started it all, David Simon's True Crime classic HOMICIDE. Unavailable for 15 years and a great read in its own right, he follows Baltimore's homicide department over the course of a year. This new 'Wire'-inspired jacket is sure to appeal to fans.
The Bookseller
