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Mar 10, 2008

Sarah rated it:

“The Wire” is over. “The Wire,” which salvaged so many depressing Sunday nights. “The Wire,” which was the only reason we subscribed to HBO. “The Wire,” one of the few television dramas where I’ve repeatedly found myself thinking of all the characters and their situations as real.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels the same way. Fictional or not, Omar got obituaries in publications across the country when his character died a few weeks ago. Whole NFL teams gather together to watc More...

12 comments like (22 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2009

Mike rated it:

Seeing the re-released edition with the supercool Wire-a-like cover reminded me of how searing this book is. In this age of chatty blog writing it's refreshing to read reportage of this quality. Like Mark Baker's "Cops" but with less shock and more awe. The characters and dialogue ring with a shuddering intensity that would make James Ellroy weep. The French would have term for it; "novel verite"?

After reading it originally in the 90s and looking for all the Homic More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 04, 2007

Brendan rated it:

Reporter David Simon spends a year inside the Homicide unit of the Baltimore Police Department, observing the "murder police" working in a city which routinely has one the highest murder rates in North America. 234 murders occurred in Baltimore the year Simon wrote the book.

The murder scenes are described in every gory, grisly detail imaginable. Several cases we follow through the course of th ebook, most notably the murder of a grade school girl found in an empty lot nea More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 20, 2008

Ed rated it:

Three cheers...I finished David Simon's HOMICIDE last night. Elated I did, too. It's a honker (600+ pages). The storyline tracks a Homicide squad in the Baltimore PD over a year (234 murders in '88). Two main things held my interest. First, I liked the parts on the individual homicide detectives. Their personalities are memorable. Second, I enjoyed the police procedural (CSI) stuff. HOMICIDE is well-written and fast-paced. As expected, lots of male banter (colorful usage of the F-word). It's usu More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2011

Checkman rated it:

Good book. It's held up well over the years. A solid non-fiction account about police investigations. Some of the technology has changed as has some of the procedures, but not that much. Mr. Simon keeps the dramatic embellishments to a minimum and makes an honest attempt to show what real world police work is all about.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2010

Chris rated it:

Updated Review:

I re-read this because I am going to teach it this fall. In a book about how homicides are investigated, Simon looks at race, class, politics, police, residents, drugs, sexism, racism, and any another ism. There is plently in this book to chew over.

Older Review
I finally read this. I loved the NBC series based on this book. Honestly, if you are debating reading this book, read it. Simon is fair, and his writing is compelling. You get More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 28, 2011

Patrick rated it:

I was so blown away by the great writing on the HBO TV series The Wire that I felt compelled to track down the book that started it all, Homicide, by the series creator David Simon. Simon spent the entire year of 1988 with a unit of homicide detective units in Baltimore, a very rough and tumble city in the days of the cocaine boom. First of all Simon has a gift for narrative and was able to gain a great understanding of the politics, procedures, and personalities of the subjects of the book so a More...

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Sep 11, 2011

Joshua rated it:

I was a huge fan of the show. Huge. From day one i knew that it was finally the 'something different' that a crime story was supposed to have. Gone was the era of the hard - charging, head scratching, whodunnit replaced instead by the brilliant work-a-day grinders in the homicide squad to whom death and mayhem aren't aberrations. They are the norm.

Writers like drama. Perhaps a little too much. Okay. Let me rephrase that. WAY too much. We feel the need to tell a story about every damne More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Nichole rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is superb. David Simon knows how to tell a story. He knows how to tell a story with depth and humor and an eye for understanding relationships between people and places and systems. I'm sure that I'm not saying anything that someone else hasn't said before, but after reading this book, I feel like I understand where The Wire came from a little more clearly.
I've only given it three stars, even though I really enjoyed it, because I don't think tha More...

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Jun 18, 2011

Mario rated it:

This softcover, printed with paperback sized type, comes in at 622 pages (not counting the afterward), and though I enjoyed just about every page of the book, towards the end I was looking forward to finishing it and getting onto something else. Still, it's a year long account from a reporter embedded with the Baltimore homicide detectives, and had the author written any less, it would have cheated the reader out of the story.

I picked up this book because of the HBO show, The Wire, who More...

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Jan 24, 2011

Jayson rated it:

The novel Homicide is about a scene in Baltimore in which some kind of murder would happen every few days. The homicide unit was a brotherhood and this story delves deep within the topic and the whole process of a homicide. The story takes you deep into the lives of these people and how it was. The characters create for a very interesting story and a story that develops for something very interesting.

I has personally liked the book because these topics catch my attention and the sus More...

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Dec 26, 2010

Amin rated it:

As is now well known, David Simon is the creator of The Wire, and Homicide provides much of the raw material for the show's immediacy and realism. But it is, as a work, different. The Wire is angry, angry about institutions that Simon feels have failed the individuals they are supposed to serve. Homicide is also angry about institutional failure and malaise, but it is less about those failures, and more about the kind of person that becomes a homicide detective in Baltimore, and what it really More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2010

Adam rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Mar 31, 2009

Todd rated it:

(I will start with a complaint: Terry Gross gushes over anything even vaguely related to David Simon -- a search of Fresh Air's show descriptions returns 66 results for a search on his name. Meanwhile, she hasn't done a single story on Battlestar Galactica. Don't forget about middlebrow science fiction, Terry!)

In this book David Simon chronicles the events of a Baltimore homicide detective squad during the year 1988. The book begins on Jan 1 and ends on Dec 31. In between there are 2 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 07, 2011

Peter rated it:

Most people know David Simon from The Wire (basically the reason you got HBO), but he's also to thank for Treme, The Corner, Generation Kill, and this book that sparked the TV series of the same name.

David Simon had unprecedented access to the Baltimore Homicide Department and followed them around for all of 1988, to then spend the next two years twisting that experience into this book. And this book has it all: rape, murder, courtroom drama, corrupt politicians, conspiracy, investi More...

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Sep 04, 2010

F.R. rated it:

Believe the hype – this is a truly excellent book! An in-depth examination of one year in the life of the Baltimore Homicide department. Undoubtedly it’s gritty and earthy and contains many gruesome moments, but it’s also a very human book with the key detectives brought to life as the reader is made to understand the bizarre world they inhabit. It’s a place where death is serious but is (nearly always) a joke, where despite these men (and they are pretty much all men) having compassion it’s a d More...

7 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2011

Joe rated it:

What's both enjoyable and maddening about a book like this is that it is real - real people, real crimes. It's an interesting view into a world and culture I know little about, that of police and inner city crime. What's maddening is the reality -- that not all things are solved, wrapped up, concluded. You want the little girl case to have an answer. You want the hard work to provide closure. But reality is not like that.

It's really interesting reading this book now, having watc More...

0 comments like

Mar 20, 2010

Hazel rated it:

I haven't read much true crime, but I think this is exceptional journalistic writing. In this big book on a Baltimore homicide unit, Simon gives us an insight into the science and technique of detection, the criminal justice system, the politics of the related institutions, the personalities of the detectives and the social conditions which brought victims together with killers in 1988. He's done a good job. I understand why it won an Edgar.

Here is the opening of Chapter 7.

Sum

More...

4 comments like

Dec 02, 2011

UChicagoLaw added it

"Simon spent a year embedded with the homicide division of the Baltimore Police Department, following a squad of detectives as they dealt with cases both mundane and bizarre. The book is fascinating in large part because it describes the often conflicting forces that pull on police detectives as they go about their jobs. Their superiors within the police department demand that cases be “cleared,” meaning that the police have decided who has committed a murder regardless of whether that pers More...

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Aug 12, 2009

Steve rated it:

If you are a fan of the TV show the Wire, you should read this book. David Simon started making the transition from Baltimore Sun beat reporter to creator of the greatest TV show ever made (IMO) by taking a year off and writing this book about a year in the life of the Baltimore city homicide department. This book covers 1988 so it is before the crack epidemic took over the city and turned it into the Baltimore you know from The Wire, but they still had close to 300 murders and a lot of traged More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 11, 2011

Jeff rated it:

David Simon's Homicide is a classic - a sprawling, uncompromising work that incorporates a huge amount of digression and detail, but never loses sight of a strong central narrative that doesn't waver. We get the warts and what have you, but we also get a portrait of an inner-city homicide department that rings much too true to be fictional. Many of the individual cases described are grim and depressing in their brutality and excessive cruelty, but at the heart of this story are a group of tale More...

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Nov 08, 2008

Adam rated it:

This is an astonishingly thorough, evocative, and accurate piece of journalism. The book intimately relates, at root, what the real lives of homicide detectives are like -- it totally changed the way I look at crime and the systems we create to control it. Enough platitudes for you? It's a good book. (Fans of "The Wire" will especially enjoy this, which is fitting, as it's written by the creator of the series.)

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Kim rated it:

I loved The Wire as much as the next guy, but though this book is awesome, it's a bit of a let down after that.

As a piece of journalism, it's incredible. There aren't many reporters who could get this kind of access to a bunch of miserable homicide cops (Simon seems to have spent every waking moment with them for a year), but there's even fewer, who, having bonded with the detectives, could burn so many of them so badly in print. There's a lot of potentially career-ending stuff in th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 01, 2011

Pparskey rated it:

This book was recommended to me by a Los Angeles Police Detective. I happened to sit next to him at a wedding reception and we began to discuss police dramas on TV and which, in his estimation, were the most realistic. He indicated that "The Wire" was among the best cop shows on TV (it was on HBO for five seasons) and that "Homicide" was the basis for the show.

The book is a year long view of the lives of detectives with the Baltimore Police Department. It provide More...

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Dec 15, 2010

Gerald rated it:

From January 1st to December 31st 1988, David Simon - then a reporter on The Baltimore Sun - was granted the nominal status of 'police intern' and allowed to follow the men of the city's Homicide Unit on their grisly daily round. At first the detectives viewed him with suspicion; gradually this turned to reluctant acceptance; it ended in largely concealed admiration. The bare fact of survival is remarkable in itself, but it is overshadowed by the towering achievement of the book it generated.
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2009

Andrew rated it:

This is a compelling book which provides a fascinating insight into the world of the homicide detective in the city of Baltimore. The cases, the departmental politics and the dark, deadpan humour of the detectives are all shown unsparingly. Simon makes the detectives come alive on the page and paints a vivid picture of the psyche required to deal with murder and its attendant lies, autopsies and the parts of the human experience that, thankfully, few of us has to deal with.

It's fasc More...

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Jul 05, 2011

Ryan rated it:

As any fan of The Wire knows, David Simon, who wrote the crime beat for the Baltimore Sun, took a year off to follow the Baltimore Homicide Department for an entire year, then took a year or two off to write this book. Just like The Wire, this is an incredible look at the life, struggle, political conflict, and emotional challenges of homicide detectives pursuing the worst people and the worst crime scenes imaginable: killers, child killers, drug murderers, shotgun suicides, rape/murders, contra More...

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Apr 12, 2010

Neven rated it:

If you’re a fan of The Wire - the greatest show on TV - and you’re jonesing for more of that multilayered urban poetry, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of David Simon’s 1991 narrative nonfiction classic which launched the (lesser) namesake show and The Wire itself. The real stories are here, the real Jay Landsman, McNulty, The Bunk. Snot Boogie, even.

Even if you haven’t seen The Wire - and what are you waiting for - you shouldn’t skip this. It’s easily the best book I’ve rea More...

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Oct 06, 2009

Noel rated it:

A great book, journalist David Simon spends a year with the Baltimore Homicide unit and writes from the inside out about a city and it's impulsive, calculated and downright deranged inhabitants. Whether it's drug dealers, domestic violence or dope fiends on the make this book has it all. A Year on the Killing Streets....the subtitle says it all,there aint no respite from the streets for the reader or detectives.It's superbly written and the main homicide detectives come to life as the cases deve More...

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Oct 17, 2009

Andy rated it:

A pretty awesome behind-the-scenes look at the life of the Baltimore homicide department in 1988, written by a journalist who embedded himself in one of its divisions for that entire year. It was the antecedent of two major TV shows, "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "The Wire," and it's easy to see, upon reading it, why network executives thought it would be great television material. Body after body hits the streets, detectives are summoned, they try to piece things togeth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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