Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - Hardcover

Simon, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039548829X ISBN 13: 9780395488294

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1991

Synopsis

An account of a year inside a city homicide unit focuses on three detectives investigating murders in Baltimore--a city torn by racial tensions and plagued by drugs and crime

About this title

Review:

This 1992 Edgar Award winner for best fact crime is nothing short of a classic. David Simon, a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun, spent the year 1988 with three homicide squads, accompanying them through all the grim and grisly moments of their work--from first telephone call to final piece of paperwork. The picture that emerges through a masterful accumulation of details is that homicide detectives are a rare breed who seem to thrive on coffee, cigarettes, and persistence, through an endlessly exhausting parade of murder scenes. As the Washington Post writes, "We seem to have an insatiable appetite for police stories.... David Simon's entry is far and away the best, the most readable, the most reliable and relentless of them all.... An eye for the scenes of slaughter and pursuit and an ear for the cadences of cop talk, both business and banter, lend Simon's account the fascination that truth often has."

From the Inside Flap:

Edgar and Anthony Award Winner
Selected by the Literary Guild
"Remarkable...A true crime classic."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Enter the workday of real policemen. Follow fifteen detectives, three sergeants, and a lieutenant, whose job it is to investigate Baltimore's 234 murders. You will get a cop's-eye-view of the bureaucracy, the highs of success, the moments of despair, and the non-stop rush of pursuits, anger, banter, and violence that make up a cop's life. Now an acclaimed television series, this extraordinary book is the insider's look at what you have always wondered about.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 039548829X
• ISBN 13: 9780395488294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 599