'Homicide' by David Simon

There are places in the book in which Simon uses his descriptions of the physical facts and events as bricks upon which to stand and survey the society. It feels apt to speak of transcendence, but it is misleading: Simon does not transcend the prosaic or the physical; he builds upon it. And the occasional deliberate phrase of wisdom he imparts do transcend the context of Baltimore homicide. He has written a book about American poverty, about internal metropolitan politics, about some of the best and worst aspects of human society. As with all good literature, the ephemeral and eternal is made tangible in the prosaic and specific .

This is a book for which I sacrifice sleep. A book that completely transplants me into another world, into a world far removed from my comfortable life and yet which is rendered immensely life-like to me.

The book is not about any individual, nor any single criminal case. It is centred on the homicide detectives of the Baltimore Police Department. Simon manages to make the story more gripping than a crime show and yet avoid sensationalising. He renders the detectives’ lives with grit and portrays the boring grind, without making reading about it a boring grind. He describes the painful, dispiriting, dis-enchanted-ness that must be the predominant daily emotion of police investigating murder in one of the most violent and impoverished cities in the industrialised world.