Homicide by David Simon Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Homicide
Book Review: Brilliant and readable
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's a book that gets into the minds of homicide detectives like no other. The author is insightful and thorough, but his writing style is a celebration of brevity. Working within the law and sometimes around it or even in spite of it, the detectives are revealed as all-too-human but praiseworthy individuals. Read this with Randy Sutton's "True Blue : Police Stories by Those Who Have Lived Them" and you'll have the best writing on cops and crime available today.Book Review: Can't get any closer than this
Summary: 5 Stars
Homicide does an amazing job of taking the reader inside the day-to-day operations of the Homicide unit in Baltimore. Reading this book, you gain an appreciation not only for the investigative work done by the detectives, but also for the troubles they encounter. Simon gives you a detailed account of the inner-workings that you cannot learn anywhere else. From the murder to the trial, Homicide shows how the real-world criminal justice system works with all of its flaws. This is a page-turning whodunit in every form, and the best part is that it is true!I am concerned to see other people claiming that this book does not deserve 5 stars because it does not live up to the characters in the T.V. show and because it has too much vulgarity. If these are the only criticisms (weak ones at that) that one can find within Homicide, then it deserves every star offered.
Read Homicide and you won't be dissapointed.
Book Review: Chilling and dramatic
Summary: 4 Stars
A fan of the TV show that was based on this book, I decided to read the book. I was satisfied in many ways but disappointed in some. This book, first of all, is superb journalism. Simon has guts to do what he did--go inside a major urban homicide department and live the life of a detective for a year. Guts because of the sensivity required to deal with the people involved: the detectives, the police department and the city government, the victims and the families, the witnesses and the suspects. Guts because of the horrible nature of the job of a homicide detective, dealing every day with death. Simon does an excellent job describing the nature of the detectives' jobs and the events of the year he chronicles, while remaining for the most part even-handed in his treatment. He does tend to favor the detectives' point of view (not that they get off easy by any means), but that can be explained by the fact that they are the primary focus of the book and that the suspects and victims were rarely willing participants in the process.This book covers the city of Baltimore, which is about an hour's drive from where I live. It describes the dark underbelly of the city, something most of us thankfully never see. When I go to Baltimore, I see a living, functioning city. From this book I learned that there a whole dimention to the city that I, again thankfully, know nothing about. I find it in a way shocking that the horrible crimes that Simon describes take place not in some far-off location, but basically in my own backyard, involving people I could possible bump into on the street. I do not generally suspect the worst about people, so to read about the things people are capable of doing to each other, in my own country, in my own state, is mind-blowing. On a larger scale, Simon is describing people's inhumanity toward each other, people doing things to each other that I never thought someone could be capable of--men raping two-year-olds, eviserating 11-year-olds, killing each other over $20 or an article of clothing. What is wrong with these people, I kept asking myself. Truth is truly stranger than fiction. If these events were not true, nobody would believe them. And what shines through clearly in Simon's narrative is that these detectives, overworked and underpaid, are capable of living with this kind of evil on a daily basis and still function, still solve crimes, still hold people accountable for their actions. Sure they have their coping mechanisms and warped view of the world, but they manage to do what we, the public, ask them to do, and do it well.
This books stops short of five stars for a few reasons. First, subjectively, the real detectives in the book did not live up to the detectives in the TV show. They were less likable, some even first-rate jerks. They flaunt their positions as police detectives, they make raw jokes, racist comments, are sexist and homophobic, acting in ways unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, if there is such a thing in urban police departments. Their actions, while faithfully described by the author, are a little hard to take at times. Second, the vulgarity got old after a while. Simon's goal of realism could still have been achieved without directly quoting every swear word that came out of someone's mouth.
In all, though, the year that Simon covers goes by very quickly and at the end of the book, as old cases carry over into the next year and new cases crop up, he leaves you wanting the stories to go on. He admits in his note at the back of the book that a calendar year is an arbitrary mark when it comes to homicides. They just keep coming.
Book Review: Contains Much Realism
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very realistic account of a year in the lives of one shift of homicide detectives written by a newspaper reporter that reads as well as fiction. You are right there at the crime scenes with the primary detectives when they roll the body over looking for clues, when they interview the witnesses, fill out the paperwork and go out for drinks after work when the board is changed from red to black, signifying the case has been closed. You can get a real appreciation as to what it is like to be an underpaid, underappreciated and overworked homicide investigator in a major city. Interrrogation techniques are revealed in this unique book. Some trial action. Definitely worth the read. Contains real life violence. A good companion to the TV show.Book Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
An outstanding piece of journalism from Mr Simon. One of the best books ever. Mind you, I've only read about ten.