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Blue Blood by Conlon, Edward (2004) Paperback
As a Harvard graduate and regular writer for the New Yorker, Edward Conlon is a little different from most of his fellow New York City cops.
And the stories he tells in his compelling memoir Blue Blood are miles away from the commonly told Hollywood-style police tales that are always action packed but rarely tethered to reality.
While there is action here, there's also political hassle, the rich and often troubling history of a department not unfamiliar with corruption, and the day to day life of people charged with preserving order in America's largest city. Conlon's book is, in part, a memoir as he progresses from being a rookie cop working the beat at troubled housing projects to assignments in the narcotics division to eventually becoming a detective. But it's also the story of his family history within the enormous NYPD as well as the evolving role of the police force within the city.
Conlon relates the controversies surrounding the somewhat familiar shooting of Amadou Diallou and the abuse, at the hands of New York cops, of Abner Louima. But being a cop himself, Conlon lends insight and nuance to these issues that could not possibly be found in the newspapers. And as an outstanding writer, he draws the reader into that world. In the book's most remarkable passage, Conlon tells of the grim but necessary work done at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the rubble and remains left in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 (a section originally published in The New Yorker).
In many ways, Blue Blood comes to resemble the world of New York City law enforcement that Conlon describes: both are expansive, sprawling, multi-dimensional, and endlessly fascinating. And Conlon's writing is perfectly matched to his subject, always lively, keenly observant, and possessing a streetwise energy.
And the stories he tells in his compelling memoir Blue Blood are miles away from the commonly told Hollywood-style police tales that are always action packed but rarely tethered to reality.
While there is action here, there's also political hassle, the rich and often troubling history of a department not unfamiliar with corruption, and the day to day life of people charged with preserving order in America's largest city. Conlon's book is, in part, a memoir as he progresses from being a rookie cop working the beat at troubled housing projects to assignments in the narcotics division to eventually becoming a detective. But it's also the story of his family history within the enormous NYPD as well as the evolving role of the police force within the city.
Conlon relates the controversies surrounding the somewhat familiar shooting of Amadou Diallou and the abuse, at the hands of New York cops, of Abner Louima. But being a cop himself, Conlon lends insight and nuance to these issues that could not possibly be found in the newspapers. And as an outstanding writer, he draws the reader into that world. In the book's most remarkable passage, Conlon tells of the grim but necessary work done at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the rubble and remains left in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 (a section originally published in The New Yorker).
In many ways, Blue Blood comes to resemble the world of New York City law enforcement that Conlon describes: both are expansive, sprawling, multi-dimensional, and endlessly fascinating. And Conlon's writing is perfectly matched to his subject, always lively, keenly observant, and possessing a streetwise energy.
495 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
96 people are currently reading
1549 people want to read
About the author
Edward Conlon
10 books49 followersEdward Conlon was born in the Bronx. Conlon spent most of his childhood in nearby Yonkers. He attended Regis High School and graduated from Harvard in 1987 before joining the NYPD in 1995.Mr. Conlon's family background is also in law enforcement. Mr. Conlon's great-grandfather was a police sergeant in Brooklyn, and his father was an F.B.I. agent.
Conlon's police experience focused on patrolling city-owned public housing developments, as well as arresting street-level drug dealers after observing their sales from surveillance posts. In 2002, he was promoted to the rank of detective, and was assigned to the Bronx's 44th Precinct. He retired as a Detective, Second Grade, in July 2011 after 16 years with the department.
He has published articles in The New Yorker and Harpers and his work has been included in The Best American Essays. He is the author of a memoir, Blue Blood, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, A New York Times Notable Book, and a New York Times bestseller." He is also the author of the novel, Red On Red.
Conlon's police experience focused on patrolling city-owned public housing developments, as well as arresting street-level drug dealers after observing their sales from surveillance posts. In 2002, he was promoted to the rank of detective, and was assigned to the Bronx's 44th Precinct. He retired as a Detective, Second Grade, in July 2011 after 16 years with the department.
He has published articles in The New Yorker and Harpers and his work has been included in The Best American Essays. He is the author of a memoir, Blue Blood, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, A New York Times Notable Book, and a New York Times bestseller." He is also the author of the novel, Red On Red.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews
August 13, 2023
Very readable and a high quality memoir of Edward Conlon's first seven years as a New York City police officer. He has since resigned from the NYPD (1995-2011) to pursue his writing career. A cynic might speculate that he went into the profession of law enforcement for the material that it would supply - (writers write what they know) - and there is that possibility. However he still wore a badge and put himself on the line. Pretty gutsy for somebody doing research in my opinion.
Having now been a police officer myself for the past twelve (+) years I can say that Mr. Conlon comes across as being very honest in his writing. He describes the work (politics, lawyers,administrators,mickey mouse garbage), the people and their situations that officers encounter and other officers to a tee.
In between the details and war-stories Mr. Conlon goes into his family history and examines how policing works in our society on both the macro and micro levels. Just what I would expect from a Harvard Man.
I work in a much smaller city with a population of 50,000 (est.), but police work is police work no matter where you are. Our city also has issues with street gangs, juvenile offenders, drug users, drug dealers, violence and murder.There are cops who are hot-shots and cops who simply want to make it through to retirement. Then there are cops (the majority) who are somewhere in between. We aren't all part of "The Brotherhood of the Badge" and we aren't all misanthropic drunks who die from either heart disease or self-inflicted gunshots courtesy of our sidearm.
Mr. Conlon shows the work (warts and all) and the men and women who wear the badge. Police officers aren't always heroes and we aren't all corrupt S.O.B's. His memoir both entertains and educates. I was relieved to learn that it wasn't a hatchet job nor was it a piece of self-aggrandizement. It's simply the story of his experience as a police officer.
While a lengthy book it's fast moving and engrossing. I found myself often nodding in agreement or in amusement. With just a few changes here and there much of what Mr. Conlon talks about I have experienced myself in way or another. Rest assured this isn't a varnished, flashy memoir. He's very honest in his writing.
In conclusion I recommend reading Blue Blood. I tend to stay away from cop memoirs, but this is a good one. Well worth your time and money. Kudos Mr. Conlon.
Having now been a police officer myself for the past twelve (+) years I can say that Mr. Conlon comes across as being very honest in his writing. He describes the work (politics, lawyers,administrators,mickey mouse garbage), the people and their situations that officers encounter and other officers to a tee.
In between the details and war-stories Mr. Conlon goes into his family history and examines how policing works in our society on both the macro and micro levels. Just what I would expect from a Harvard Man.
I work in a much smaller city with a population of 50,000 (est.), but police work is police work no matter where you are. Our city also has issues with street gangs, juvenile offenders, drug users, drug dealers, violence and murder.There are cops who are hot-shots and cops who simply want to make it through to retirement. Then there are cops (the majority) who are somewhere in between. We aren't all part of "The Brotherhood of the Badge" and we aren't all misanthropic drunks who die from either heart disease or self-inflicted gunshots courtesy of our sidearm.
Mr. Conlon shows the work (warts and all) and the men and women who wear the badge. Police officers aren't always heroes and we aren't all corrupt S.O.B's. His memoir both entertains and educates. I was relieved to learn that it wasn't a hatchet job nor was it a piece of self-aggrandizement. It's simply the story of his experience as a police officer.
While a lengthy book it's fast moving and engrossing. I found myself often nodding in agreement or in amusement. With just a few changes here and there much of what Mr. Conlon talks about I have experienced myself in way or another. Rest assured this isn't a varnished, flashy memoir. He's very honest in his writing.
In conclusion I recommend reading Blue Blood. I tend to stay away from cop memoirs, but this is a good one. Well worth your time and money. Kudos Mr. Conlon.
June 23, 2009
Harvard grad becomes a cop. The title comes from the family heritage--Conlon has NYPD, NYFD, and FBI in his family tree.
"The bulletproof vest--'bullet resistant,' technically--is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, 'Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death...' Other cops wrote their blood type."
"I was constantly amazed by how many people talked me into arresting them."
Conlon is a terrific writer with a sly sense of humor. (He once called in sick with a cold and, when told that cold symptoms were not severe enough to merit a sick day, said, "Put down that I have Dutch elm disease.")
About an informant he disliked: "It wasn't as if crack was getting great press in the South Bronx in 1999, but it took a particular kind of idiot to wake up one day and say, 'Angel dust is a product I've heard nothing but good about, and it's about time I was involved.'"
My only complaint is that the book seems overlong in places. I didn't need the reviews of Serpico or the Godfather or French Connection movies.
Although Conlon sometimes makes comments such as "What's the world coming to when you can't trust a whore named Snake?", he is actually very idealistic and hardworking.
I enjoyed learning that the official flower of the Bronx is the corpse flower, and its motto is Ne cede malis, which means "Do not give way to malice."
"The bulletproof vest--'bullet resistant,' technically--is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, 'Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death...' Other cops wrote their blood type."
"I was constantly amazed by how many people talked me into arresting them."
Conlon is a terrific writer with a sly sense of humor. (He once called in sick with a cold and, when told that cold symptoms were not severe enough to merit a sick day, said, "Put down that I have Dutch elm disease.")
About an informant he disliked: "It wasn't as if crack was getting great press in the South Bronx in 1999, but it took a particular kind of idiot to wake up one day and say, 'Angel dust is a product I've heard nothing but good about, and it's about time I was involved.'"
My only complaint is that the book seems overlong in places. I didn't need the reviews of Serpico or the Godfather or French Connection movies.
Although Conlon sometimes makes comments such as "What's the world coming to when you can't trust a whore named Snake?", he is actually very idealistic and hardworking.
I enjoyed learning that the official flower of the Bronx is the corpse flower, and its motto is Ne cede malis, which means "Do not give way to malice."
December 18, 2009
This review originally ran in the San Jose Mercury News:
As a TV cop-show fan, I had high hopes for this book. It's by an NYPD detective -- a real-life Lennie Briscoe or Andy Sipowicz, except that Edward Conlon is a lot younger, and he graduated from Harvard and has written for the New Yorker. ''Blue Blood'' promises to be a literate, sophisticated and realistic view of the cops who pursue what TV has taught us to call ''perps'' and ''skels.''
And a lot of it is just that, with scenes that are more harsh and foul than anything that could be shown on TV, and hence sometimes also a lot funnier or a lot scarier. There are finely evocative accounts of police work, which can go from numb boredom to adrenaline-flushed action in a split second. There's a graphic, harrowing, painful description of working the Fresh Kills landfill, searching for remains in the debris that was hauled there after the destruction of the World Trade Center. There are keenly characterized portraits of Conlon's fellow cops: ordinary, fallible people who can find themselves doing extraordinary, heroic things. And there are quietly scathing portraits of the bureaucrats and time-servers who complicate their lives.
In short, there's a very good 300-page book in this 560-page book. Finding it in a narrative that's often disorganized and repetitive is the hard part. Conlon has most of the gifts a writer needs: a good ear, a sharp eye, a trained mind and an abundance of compassion and empathy. Too bad that his editors haven't shown him how to put those gifts to the best use. There are too many slow patches, too many excursions into the administrative maze of the NYPD, too many raids and stakeouts and collars that seem like recaps of stuff we've already read. But every time I was tempted to abandon the book I was caught up again by something fresh and exciting.
One of the things Conlon writes penetratingly about is his family, which like many Irish-American families seems to have police work in its genes: His father, John Conlon, was an FBI agent; he was named for his Uncle Eddie, who was a cop; and his maternal great-grandfather, Pat Brown, joined the force in 1907 and spent 33 years on it, mostly in uniform.
Pat, however, was apparently corrupt (''He used to carry the bag on Atlantic Avenue,'' Conlon was told by one old-timer), and his marriage to Conlon's great-grandmother fell apart, leaving the family with none-too-nice memories of him. ''I know a little about how Pat Brown was a bad cop, but I don't know how he was a good one; if he saved lives or took them, delivered babies or calmed angry crowds,'' Conlon writes, demonstrating the kind of wisdom about the mixed and fallible nature of human beings that one obtains on the street. ''Pat Brown escaped judgment but paid with his reputation, escaping fond and common remembrance as well.''
Conlon's portrayal of his relationship with his father is tinged more with respect than with affection, though he also makes it clear that some of John Conlon's remoteness may have resulted from growing up in a hard-scrabble immigrant family in which affection was sometimes treated as a luxury. As a boy, Conlon's father was once sent to summer camp with the Colored Orphans League because the alternative was the Boy Scouts, which his mother regarded as a Protestant organization -- ''in her reckoning, he was better off as a white rarity than a Catholic one.'' But while he was away, his family moved, without letting him know -- or leaving their new address with a neighbor. A passing fruit-and-vegetable vendor drove the panicky boy around the neighborhood until he spotted his brother playing in the street. His mother's reaction: ''Ahh, Johnny, we knew ye'd find us.''
Edward Conlon's acceptance to Harvard looked like a departure from the family history, but he majored in English, which always makes it difficult to predict a career path. After compiling ''a post-graduate resume that included messenger, elevator operator, and guy at the copy machine,'' Conlon landed ajob as a court liaison with a social service agency. After this introduction to the criminal justice system, Conlon joined the force in 1995. He writes revealingly about the stress the job places on rookies: ''Once, I had a dream about work that drifted into a scene where someone was pounding furiously on my apartment door, and as I woke, I realized that the pounding was my own heartbeat.''
Assigned to the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit (SNEU), Conlon confronted the weird hell of the drug culture, which he evokes for us with a literariness that might elicit a snort from Briscoe or Sipowicz, but nonetheless captures reality: ''Terminal junkies have none of the trapped-rat frenzy of the crackhead, possessing instead a fatal calm, as if they are keeping their eyes open as they drown. When you collar them, they can have a look of confirmed and somehow contented self-hatred, as if the world is doing to them what they expect and deserve. . . . There is something authentically tragic about an addict, in the way the wreckage of their lives is both freely chosen and somehow fated.''
Conlon refers to police work as ''the Job'' -- in capital letters -- but it's a job in which matters of life and death exist in an uneasy relationship with politics -- something the public notices only when a violent controversy erupts, such as the death of Amadou Diallo, who, in February 1999, was struck by 19 of the 41 shots that four NYPD cops fired at him. A firestorm of protest arose at the cops' apparent use of excessive force on an unarmed -- and innocent -- suspect.
Conlon gives us the cops'-eye view of the Diallo case, treating it as a disastrous ''fog of war'' mistake: The lobby where Diallo was standing was dark, and when he reached for his wallet for identification, a cop mistook it for a gun. Another cop tripped and fell, so the others thought he had been shot and kept firing. ''Anyone who has had to challenge strangers on the rooftops and in the alleys of this city, who has confronted the furtive or forthright menace of sudden movement by half-seen hands,'' Conlon writes, ''knows that instant of decision when gunshots can echo through a lifetime -- whether that lifetime will last for moments or decades.''
Conlon may or may not be right in regarding the Diallo killing as abnormal in a department that he sees as striving for restraint and racial sensitivity, and as one that had succeeded in lowering the city's crime rate. He mostly blames the politicians for exploiting the case, leaving a legacy of acrimony and causing a backlash within the police department so severe that, four years after Diallo's death, an NYPD chief pulled the police protection from a Bruce Springsteen concert at Shea Stadium to protest Springsteen's song about the case, ''41 Shots.''
But Conlon is handicapped by the fact that it's hard to write frankly and critically about an institution of which you're still an active part. The NYPD exists in one of the most politically, socially and ethnically volatile cities in the United States, and Conlon's efforts to look at the department in this larger context often feel superficial, tentative, apologetic -- he's much better writing about life on the street than about life in offices and meeting rooms.
Conlon is aware that many readers will come to his book with shows like ''Law & Order'' and ''NYPD Blue'' in mind. He notes that ''most people seem eager to know the degree of realism in these shows, which always seemed to me beside the point, as my colleagues Batman, Spider-man, and Superman would likely agree.''
So he's determined to give us the Job in its actuality: the slack and tedious hours that connect with the rewarding and/or hazardous moments. But the truth is, this often makes for dull reading, and not just because we're accustomed to seeing the cops solve cases in an hour (counting commercials) on TV. I found myself trying to cope with a blur of acronyms and initials (SNEU, PSA, IAB, HIDTA, DECS) as I plodded through yet another misfired stakeout, more negotiations with a flaky confidential informant and further attempts by Conlon to move through an administrative system that seems (like most of the places we work in) to be a labyrinth of divisions that do their best not to communicate with one another.
As a cop, Conlon is a cool pro, a credit to the force that he so evidently loves. And ''Blue Blood'' would be a fine book if it weren't so bloated and short of breath. It needs to lay off the doughnuts and hit the gym.
As a TV cop-show fan, I had high hopes for this book. It's by an NYPD detective -- a real-life Lennie Briscoe or Andy Sipowicz, except that Edward Conlon is a lot younger, and he graduated from Harvard and has written for the New Yorker. ''Blue Blood'' promises to be a literate, sophisticated and realistic view of the cops who pursue what TV has taught us to call ''perps'' and ''skels.''
And a lot of it is just that, with scenes that are more harsh and foul than anything that could be shown on TV, and hence sometimes also a lot funnier or a lot scarier. There are finely evocative accounts of police work, which can go from numb boredom to adrenaline-flushed action in a split second. There's a graphic, harrowing, painful description of working the Fresh Kills landfill, searching for remains in the debris that was hauled there after the destruction of the World Trade Center. There are keenly characterized portraits of Conlon's fellow cops: ordinary, fallible people who can find themselves doing extraordinary, heroic things. And there are quietly scathing portraits of the bureaucrats and time-servers who complicate their lives.
In short, there's a very good 300-page book in this 560-page book. Finding it in a narrative that's often disorganized and repetitive is the hard part. Conlon has most of the gifts a writer needs: a good ear, a sharp eye, a trained mind and an abundance of compassion and empathy. Too bad that his editors haven't shown him how to put those gifts to the best use. There are too many slow patches, too many excursions into the administrative maze of the NYPD, too many raids and stakeouts and collars that seem like recaps of stuff we've already read. But every time I was tempted to abandon the book I was caught up again by something fresh and exciting.
One of the things Conlon writes penetratingly about is his family, which like many Irish-American families seems to have police work in its genes: His father, John Conlon, was an FBI agent; he was named for his Uncle Eddie, who was a cop; and his maternal great-grandfather, Pat Brown, joined the force in 1907 and spent 33 years on it, mostly in uniform.
Pat, however, was apparently corrupt (''He used to carry the bag on Atlantic Avenue,'' Conlon was told by one old-timer), and his marriage to Conlon's great-grandmother fell apart, leaving the family with none-too-nice memories of him. ''I know a little about how Pat Brown was a bad cop, but I don't know how he was a good one; if he saved lives or took them, delivered babies or calmed angry crowds,'' Conlon writes, demonstrating the kind of wisdom about the mixed and fallible nature of human beings that one obtains on the street. ''Pat Brown escaped judgment but paid with his reputation, escaping fond and common remembrance as well.''
Conlon's portrayal of his relationship with his father is tinged more with respect than with affection, though he also makes it clear that some of John Conlon's remoteness may have resulted from growing up in a hard-scrabble immigrant family in which affection was sometimes treated as a luxury. As a boy, Conlon's father was once sent to summer camp with the Colored Orphans League because the alternative was the Boy Scouts, which his mother regarded as a Protestant organization -- ''in her reckoning, he was better off as a white rarity than a Catholic one.'' But while he was away, his family moved, without letting him know -- or leaving their new address with a neighbor. A passing fruit-and-vegetable vendor drove the panicky boy around the neighborhood until he spotted his brother playing in the street. His mother's reaction: ''Ahh, Johnny, we knew ye'd find us.''
Edward Conlon's acceptance to Harvard looked like a departure from the family history, but he majored in English, which always makes it difficult to predict a career path. After compiling ''a post-graduate resume that included messenger, elevator operator, and guy at the copy machine,'' Conlon landed ajob as a court liaison with a social service agency. After this introduction to the criminal justice system, Conlon joined the force in 1995. He writes revealingly about the stress the job places on rookies: ''Once, I had a dream about work that drifted into a scene where someone was pounding furiously on my apartment door, and as I woke, I realized that the pounding was my own heartbeat.''
Assigned to the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit (SNEU), Conlon confronted the weird hell of the drug culture, which he evokes for us with a literariness that might elicit a snort from Briscoe or Sipowicz, but nonetheless captures reality: ''Terminal junkies have none of the trapped-rat frenzy of the crackhead, possessing instead a fatal calm, as if they are keeping their eyes open as they drown. When you collar them, they can have a look of confirmed and somehow contented self-hatred, as if the world is doing to them what they expect and deserve. . . . There is something authentically tragic about an addict, in the way the wreckage of their lives is both freely chosen and somehow fated.''
Conlon refers to police work as ''the Job'' -- in capital letters -- but it's a job in which matters of life and death exist in an uneasy relationship with politics -- something the public notices only when a violent controversy erupts, such as the death of Amadou Diallo, who, in February 1999, was struck by 19 of the 41 shots that four NYPD cops fired at him. A firestorm of protest arose at the cops' apparent use of excessive force on an unarmed -- and innocent -- suspect.
Conlon gives us the cops'-eye view of the Diallo case, treating it as a disastrous ''fog of war'' mistake: The lobby where Diallo was standing was dark, and when he reached for his wallet for identification, a cop mistook it for a gun. Another cop tripped and fell, so the others thought he had been shot and kept firing. ''Anyone who has had to challenge strangers on the rooftops and in the alleys of this city, who has confronted the furtive or forthright menace of sudden movement by half-seen hands,'' Conlon writes, ''knows that instant of decision when gunshots can echo through a lifetime -- whether that lifetime will last for moments or decades.''
Conlon may or may not be right in regarding the Diallo killing as abnormal in a department that he sees as striving for restraint and racial sensitivity, and as one that had succeeded in lowering the city's crime rate. He mostly blames the politicians for exploiting the case, leaving a legacy of acrimony and causing a backlash within the police department so severe that, four years after Diallo's death, an NYPD chief pulled the police protection from a Bruce Springsteen concert at Shea Stadium to protest Springsteen's song about the case, ''41 Shots.''
But Conlon is handicapped by the fact that it's hard to write frankly and critically about an institution of which you're still an active part. The NYPD exists in one of the most politically, socially and ethnically volatile cities in the United States, and Conlon's efforts to look at the department in this larger context often feel superficial, tentative, apologetic -- he's much better writing about life on the street than about life in offices and meeting rooms.
Conlon is aware that many readers will come to his book with shows like ''Law & Order'' and ''NYPD Blue'' in mind. He notes that ''most people seem eager to know the degree of realism in these shows, which always seemed to me beside the point, as my colleagues Batman, Spider-man, and Superman would likely agree.''
So he's determined to give us the Job in its actuality: the slack and tedious hours that connect with the rewarding and/or hazardous moments. But the truth is, this often makes for dull reading, and not just because we're accustomed to seeing the cops solve cases in an hour (counting commercials) on TV. I found myself trying to cope with a blur of acronyms and initials (SNEU, PSA, IAB, HIDTA, DECS) as I plodded through yet another misfired stakeout, more negotiations with a flaky confidential informant and further attempts by Conlon to move through an administrative system that seems (like most of the places we work in) to be a labyrinth of divisions that do their best not to communicate with one another.
As a cop, Conlon is a cool pro, a credit to the force that he so evidently loves. And ''Blue Blood'' would be a fine book if it weren't so bloated and short of breath. It needs to lay off the doughnuts and hit the gym.
July 7, 2010
Basically, I got bored. It's written as a personal history/memoir, but can get very stream-of-consciousness that assumes you're intimately familiar with every name he's previously mentioned and with cop lingo. Sometimes he doesn't bother to define an acronym on first use (editors, you've failed your calling!), making the flow of reading very choppy. He also thinks the reader is interested in his entire family history, which, frankly, I'm not.
May 9, 2018
I've been in law enforcement over 16 years as I write this, so the idea of this book interested me. A cop who is also a writer and is told at times is too smart for his job sounded familiar, at the risk of sounding like I'm boasting.
Conlon spins a tale of his career with the NYPD from rookie to Detective. He honestly recounts his own stories (badges love war stories), which both make him look good and foolish, so points for honesty in his diversity of stories. He goes over a lot of history, both for the department and his family. I honestly would have been ok with less of his family in the story-- I'm not sure I needed to know this much about his grandparents, for example.
He recounts the major highs and lows of the department, and wisely admits he wasn't part of most of them. It's a good history from that perspective. BUT, just after he made Detective was the 9/11 attacks, and his recounting of that was horrific, if well done. He wasn't there when the planes hit, but he had to deal with the aftermath.
I also liked that he was very open and honest about how the job can be made utter hell by bad bosses. This has been my experience as well. I identified a lot with these parts of the book.
It's a good tale, although I feel it could have been shorter. An interesting read. Recommended for anyone who is interested in what law enforcement is really like, or is interested in the history of New York City.
Conlon spins a tale of his career with the NYPD from rookie to Detective. He honestly recounts his own stories (badges love war stories), which both make him look good and foolish, so points for honesty in his diversity of stories. He goes over a lot of history, both for the department and his family. I honestly would have been ok with less of his family in the story-- I'm not sure I needed to know this much about his grandparents, for example.
He recounts the major highs and lows of the department, and wisely admits he wasn't part of most of them. It's a good history from that perspective. BUT, just after he made Detective was the 9/11 attacks, and his recounting of that was horrific, if well done. He wasn't there when the planes hit, but he had to deal with the aftermath.
I also liked that he was very open and honest about how the job can be made utter hell by bad bosses. This has been my experience as well. I identified a lot with these parts of the book.
It's a good tale, although I feel it could have been shorter. An interesting read. Recommended for anyone who is interested in what law enforcement is really like, or is interested in the history of New York City.
Want to read
September 15, 2024I really wanted to rate this four or five stars. Three at the very least. I just can't. Conlon seems like an awesome guy and an awesome cop. He can write well. But there are parts - looong parts - included here that just didn't interest me.
I started this because I wanted to read about Conlon's police experiences and maybe a little about his life in general. I got that but those were such small parts. Granted, they were many, but just so, so small.
In between these parts that I liked reading I had to wade through the history of the NYPD (not interesting to me in the least beyond a brief outline) and I had to wade through the lives and experiences of others who were in Conlon's family and other ex-police/security guards/in-some-way-shape-or-form-civic-duty-job types. Again, not interesting to me. At all.
Conlon likes to write and this is obvious when reading. The problem is he likes to write so much that he goes on and on and on and inserts things that just don't interest the average reader picking this up. If a reader was a history of the NYPD he or she won't pick up a cop memoir. If someone wants a cop memoir they won't pick up a text on the history of the NYPD. Both are here yet it's a memoir.
I liked reading about his teammates, the police he came into contact with, but I didn't like reading about some guy from 1920 who may or may not have been corrupt. :(
I love police related non-fiction but this just wasn't for me. If someone wants the "whole" bit - part memoir/part textbook/part whatever else - I'd say this is it.
I started this because I wanted to read about Conlon's police experiences and maybe a little about his life in general. I got that but those were such small parts. Granted, they were many, but just so, so small.
In between these parts that I liked reading I had to wade through the history of the NYPD (not interesting to me in the least beyond a brief outline) and I had to wade through the lives and experiences of others who were in Conlon's family and other ex-police/security guards/in-some-way-shape-or-form-civic-duty-job types. Again, not interesting to me. At all.
Conlon likes to write and this is obvious when reading. The problem is he likes to write so much that he goes on and on and on and inserts things that just don't interest the average reader picking this up. If a reader was a history of the NYPD he or she won't pick up a cop memoir. If someone wants a cop memoir they won't pick up a text on the history of the NYPD. Both are here yet it's a memoir.
I liked reading about his teammates, the police he came into contact with, but I didn't like reading about some guy from 1920 who may or may not have been corrupt. :(
I love police related non-fiction but this just wasn't for me. If someone wants the "whole" bit - part memoir/part textbook/part whatever else - I'd say this is it.
February 4, 2023
Parts of it were excellent! I enjoyed the history and elements of the Irish in the NYPD. The section re 9/11 was very poignant.
This was not that best true crime book I have ever read but it wasn’t bad at all.
This was not that best true crime book I have ever read but it wasn’t bad at all.
August 12, 2012
As a student in journalism school, I got to ride along with police from the NYPD's 71st precinct as they patrolled Brooklyn's Crown Heights on an autumn afternoon. Perhaps no other profession has inspired as much bad fiction and unfavorable press (especially pre-9/11) as the police, so it was fascinating to see the reality behind those distortions, to participate in the mundane routines of police life--clearing out illegal street vendors, responding to bogus 911 calls, picking up cars that were abandoned in the middle of the night by chop shops--to see what movies and T.V. and the news media get right, and wrong.
Short of doing a ride-along, I can't think of a better way to understand law enforcement than to read this excellent, thorough memoir. It is perhaps surprising that no one else (to my knowledge) has written such a good memoir about police life. After all, good police work, like good writing, relies on keen powers of observation; writers and cops alike must sift through a lot of irrelevant information, sorting out truth from untruth, or at least accurately documenting someone's particular untruths for later comparison with the truth.
Conlon's book works because, above all, he strives to present a full and complete picture of police work--the rewarding moments and the petty office politics, the lofty triumphs and the embarrassing scandals alike. And in the process, he gives the reader a real Being-John-Malkovitch-esque glimpse inside the head of an NYPD officer.
One senses, beneath the particular details of his career, the general realities of cop-ness; when Conlon says, for instance, that arresting people for trespassing is "the Swiss Army knife of the housing cop," the reader gets a feel for the selective enforcement of the law that probably characterizes all lower-level police work. Conlon and his fellow flat-feet couldn't, and wouldn't want to, arrest everyone who was where they weren't supposed to be in a housing project, but when they need to pick someone up and don't yet have the evidence to hold them on other charges, trespassing is as good a reason as any. It highlights the interesting paradox of police work; as Conlon makes clear, the less serious the crime, the more powerful the policeman. For crimes like murder and rape, they rightly have little latitude about whether or not to make a report, investigate, and press charges, whereas for smaller offenses, police often can arrest, ticket, or admonish as they see fit.
Conlon mainly sticks to the details of his own rise through the ranks, from housing cop to narcotics cop to detective, but he steps outside that narrative to provide chilling anecdotes and telling insights relating to other officers' experiences on the job. Robberies are often harder to solve than murders, we learn, because most robberies are committed by strangers, whereas most murderers know their victim. He also provides some family history, showing how his less-than-honest relatives thrived in less-than-honest times.
Still, this could have easily been a story that bogged down in textbook detail or rote repetition of facts, were it not for the fact that Conlon is an excellently descriptive and entertaining writer. Consider this section: "It was summer in the Bronx: new songs from San Juan and old ones from Santo Domingo blared from the bodegas and the gypsy cabs; the 'icey-man' made his rounds with his little white cart that said HELADO, filling a cup with shavings from a sweating block of ice, then squirting it with mango, coco, or cherry syrup; laundry hung from the lines strung across the alleys, as if to proclaim, 'Our drawers are clean. Are yours?' There were some women you wished wore more clothes, and some you wished wore fewer, and others who had it just right."
Conlon, too, gets it just right--while other reviewers may find the book too detailed, that is one of the best things about it, for you can read it slowly, taking your time and enjoying it, feeling, at the end, richly rewarded.
Short of doing a ride-along, I can't think of a better way to understand law enforcement than to read this excellent, thorough memoir. It is perhaps surprising that no one else (to my knowledge) has written such a good memoir about police life. After all, good police work, like good writing, relies on keen powers of observation; writers and cops alike must sift through a lot of irrelevant information, sorting out truth from untruth, or at least accurately documenting someone's particular untruths for later comparison with the truth.
Conlon's book works because, above all, he strives to present a full and complete picture of police work--the rewarding moments and the petty office politics, the lofty triumphs and the embarrassing scandals alike. And in the process, he gives the reader a real Being-John-Malkovitch-esque glimpse inside the head of an NYPD officer.
One senses, beneath the particular details of his career, the general realities of cop-ness; when Conlon says, for instance, that arresting people for trespassing is "the Swiss Army knife of the housing cop," the reader gets a feel for the selective enforcement of the law that probably characterizes all lower-level police work. Conlon and his fellow flat-feet couldn't, and wouldn't want to, arrest everyone who was where they weren't supposed to be in a housing project, but when they need to pick someone up and don't yet have the evidence to hold them on other charges, trespassing is as good a reason as any. It highlights the interesting paradox of police work; as Conlon makes clear, the less serious the crime, the more powerful the policeman. For crimes like murder and rape, they rightly have little latitude about whether or not to make a report, investigate, and press charges, whereas for smaller offenses, police often can arrest, ticket, or admonish as they see fit.
Conlon mainly sticks to the details of his own rise through the ranks, from housing cop to narcotics cop to detective, but he steps outside that narrative to provide chilling anecdotes and telling insights relating to other officers' experiences on the job. Robberies are often harder to solve than murders, we learn, because most robberies are committed by strangers, whereas most murderers know their victim. He also provides some family history, showing how his less-than-honest relatives thrived in less-than-honest times.
Still, this could have easily been a story that bogged down in textbook detail or rote repetition of facts, were it not for the fact that Conlon is an excellently descriptive and entertaining writer. Consider this section: "It was summer in the Bronx: new songs from San Juan and old ones from Santo Domingo blared from the bodegas and the gypsy cabs; the 'icey-man' made his rounds with his little white cart that said HELADO, filling a cup with shavings from a sweating block of ice, then squirting it with mango, coco, or cherry syrup; laundry hung from the lines strung across the alleys, as if to proclaim, 'Our drawers are clean. Are yours?' There were some women you wished wore more clothes, and some you wished wore fewer, and others who had it just right."
Conlon, too, gets it just right--while other reviewers may find the book too detailed, that is one of the best things about it, for you can read it slowly, taking your time and enjoying it, feeling, at the end, richly rewarded.
July 18, 2010
I picked up this book as a library cast-off and wasn't overly optimistic about it. I was encouraged by the fact that Conlon had written for the New Yorker and I vaguely remembered reading some cop on the beat sort of thing there.
It is nearly 600 pages long and I read every word. He's a good writer with felicitous little remarks throughout the book. And it's really funny in spots. It's main attraction was the description of everyday police stuff in the Bronx. Conlon is modest and not a reformer out to propose his policies for the NYPD. He simply tells us what the 7 years before he got his detective's shield was like.
In a way I learned as much or more about streets that I am not likely to walk than I learned watching "The Wire," which I always say is the best television I have ever seen. But Conlon also describes the paperwork and the office politics in his typical ironic style.
He loves the work and he is particularly good at showing how a good team can bring in the perps and have fun while they're doing it. And then he is good at explaining how a lot of that work comes to naught in the bureaucracy and the courts and the reasons for that.
Along the way he memorializes his family (he is a 4th generation cop, even if he did go to Harvard unlike his antecedents) and some history of the Bronx and the NYPD itself. My only complaint is that it was maybe a little too long.
It is nearly 600 pages long and I read every word. He's a good writer with felicitous little remarks throughout the book. And it's really funny in spots. It's main attraction was the description of everyday police stuff in the Bronx. Conlon is modest and not a reformer out to propose his policies for the NYPD. He simply tells us what the 7 years before he got his detective's shield was like.
In a way I learned as much or more about streets that I am not likely to walk than I learned watching "The Wire," which I always say is the best television I have ever seen. But Conlon also describes the paperwork and the office politics in his typical ironic style.
He loves the work and he is particularly good at showing how a good team can bring in the perps and have fun while they're doing it. And then he is good at explaining how a lot of that work comes to naught in the bureaucracy and the courts and the reasons for that.
Along the way he memorializes his family (he is a 4th generation cop, even if he did go to Harvard unlike his antecedents) and some history of the Bronx and the NYPD itself. My only complaint is that it was maybe a little too long.
September 30, 2014
Edward Conlon thoroughly describes the city policeman's job. What I really appreciate is the lack of sensationalism or pretentious self-praise, qualities which permeate so many memoirs. Conlon seems to write this memoir for himself and his grandchildren. Consequently, he includes many details about his daily life on the Job which are missing from the index card record of his great-grandfather's NYPD career.
Conlon segues smoothly into interesting historical details about such NYPD "celebrities" as Popeye Doyle and Dave Durkin, as well as interesting information about the history of the mafia in New York, history of the department, and history of his father, a career FBI agent.
I have always felt stressed that we teachers are held to impossibly high standards -- required to be perfectly patient, kind, and soft spoken, regardless of provocation, for example. Now I see how policemen are held to even higher standards and without as much professional and public support as teachers receive. Holy Toledo, Batman: How can we fix this?
I will definitely read Conlon's novel soon, and I sure hope he has found a wife and looks forward to grandchildren some day. He deserves a good life.
Conlon segues smoothly into interesting historical details about such NYPD "celebrities" as Popeye Doyle and Dave Durkin, as well as interesting information about the history of the mafia in New York, history of the department, and history of his father, a career FBI agent.
I have always felt stressed that we teachers are held to impossibly high standards -- required to be perfectly patient, kind, and soft spoken, regardless of provocation, for example. Now I see how policemen are held to even higher standards and without as much professional and public support as teachers receive. Holy Toledo, Batman: How can we fix this?
I will definitely read Conlon's novel soon, and I sure hope he has found a wife and looks forward to grandchildren some day. He deserves a good life.
November 5, 2011
Wow - what a book. Not an easy read by any means, but a deep look into the everyday life of law enforcement officers and the system.
It took me awhile to figure out how to read this book without getting frustrated.
It's written in a style that jumps around within chapters, tons of code words (that is astounding to think that people know what they actually mean), and names that are just impossible to keep track of BUT once you stop trying so hard to remember everything it is a wonderful book of true, short stories.
This is a policeman's book - written by a cop and I'm sure every cop would appreciate it. I loved having a chance to peek into a policeman's world - the hard work, long hours, danger, yet with the small triumphs that keep these men and women coming back day after day. My appreciation for all types of law enforcement officers has grown even more but there is also a look into the corrupt side and office politics. But the positive side wins and we are all safer and better for it.
Would definitely recommend, but give yourself plenty of time to read this to absorb everything.
It took me awhile to figure out how to read this book without getting frustrated.
It's written in a style that jumps around within chapters, tons of code words (that is astounding to think that people know what they actually mean), and names that are just impossible to keep track of BUT once you stop trying so hard to remember everything it is a wonderful book of true, short stories.
This is a policeman's book - written by a cop and I'm sure every cop would appreciate it. I loved having a chance to peek into a policeman's world - the hard work, long hours, danger, yet with the small triumphs that keep these men and women coming back day after day. My appreciation for all types of law enforcement officers has grown even more but there is also a look into the corrupt side and office politics. But the positive side wins and we are all safer and better for it.
Would definitely recommend, but give yourself plenty of time to read this to absorb everything.
January 1, 2011
I thought this story was a little bland. The book neither enticed the reader with excitement, nor an unusual perspective. Nothing personal but, I think the whole story is Harvard grad becomes cop- there's nothing else to the story. If someone is entering law enforcement, this story will provide a realistic contrast with the television perspective of cops.
September 1, 2009
If shock value were all it took to make a great memoir, this would be a great memoir. Bloated, repetitive and choppy, Conlon's book veers annoyingly between gritty anecdotes of cop life and his own grouchy editorializing. This would have been twice as good at half the length.
January 27, 2020
The book that I read is called Blue Blood. Blue Blood was published in 2004 and was written by Edward Conlon a former second grade New York Police Department detective. Blue Blood follows Edward Conlon throughout his career in the NYPD from the academy in 1995 all the way to his retirement in 2011.
In Blue Blood there are many conflicts some of the conflicts are character vs character, and character vs society. Character vs character shows up many times in the book whenever Conlon is dealing with a suspect, witness, or another officer. Character vs society shows up in different situations one of those situations is whenever Conlon or other officers are dealing with the bureaucracy and politics within the NYPD in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
In many parts of the book New York's finest has to deal with different kinds of suspects. This appears in this quote “The squad asks, “Do you have any information about about robberies, homicides, guns, arson, hate crimes chop shops , Terrorisim?” I’ve had plenty of people say, “Chop-chop? What chop-chop” You’d also get perps who would offer dirt on the order of “Psst! John Gotti runs the Mafia!” and expect to walk on a gun collar.” (86)
In Blue Blood there are many conflicts some of the conflicts are character vs character, and character vs society. Character vs character shows up many times in the book whenever Conlon is dealing with a suspect, witness, or another officer. Character vs society shows up in different situations one of those situations is whenever Conlon or other officers are dealing with the bureaucracy and politics within the NYPD in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
In many parts of the book New York's finest has to deal with different kinds of suspects. This appears in this quote “The squad asks, “Do you have any information about about robberies, homicides, guns, arson, hate crimes chop shops , Terrorisim?” I’ve had plenty of people say, “Chop-chop? What chop-chop” You’d also get perps who would offer dirt on the order of “Psst! John Gotti runs the Mafia!” and expect to walk on a gun collar.” (86)
July 12, 2023
Edward Conlon puts on the uniform and joins the largest police force in the world, but this memoir is strangely intimate, realising that it is in the small stories that the truth shines through. Conlon pulls no punches and he calls out the bad practice still evident in the NYPD, but is at pains to make readers aware that he is proud of his colleagues and their contributions to making the city a safer place.
June 30, 2025
An excellent read. The NYPD watches over thee melting pot of America, and has figured prominently in several major headline making tragedies over the years. Mr. Conlon puts a human face on the department, and it was inspiring to read of the hard, relentless work and dedication individual officers and detectives provide to the individual crimes, in essence to live the motto, to protect and serve.
Thank you!
Thank you!
July 17, 2022
This book covers a lot of ground. He explains things pretty matter-of-factly from lots of times across a police career. I thought it was good storytelling, a tome ranging from family history to patrol tales to procedural details to the generational trauma of 9/11.
I don't have much first hand experience with cops and most cop press in the zeitgeist is about brutality and systematic issues. This book isn't necessarily a counter point trip those issues, and Conlon addresses it a bit. You can see the chain of command and inner hierarchy within the broader power structure and I got a better sense of how an individual leaf node cop both can and cannot affect those outcomes. I also got a better sense of the fraternity -- this workplace bonding is based on 12 hour shifts squashed together, vibing and joking to avoid boredom and show off and add levity to an otherwise traumatic set of job duties. None of this increased understanding absolves anyone of brutality charges, but I think context is the first step towards solving massive problems.
Also, this book is extremely long and full of detail. I feel like this is a bit of a nod to the endlessness of humanity that cops deal with, but maybe Conlon just had that much to say.
I don't have much first hand experience with cops and most cop press in the zeitgeist is about brutality and systematic issues. This book isn't necessarily a counter point trip those issues, and Conlon addresses it a bit. You can see the chain of command and inner hierarchy within the broader power structure and I got a better sense of how an individual leaf node cop both can and cannot affect those outcomes. I also got a better sense of the fraternity -- this workplace bonding is based on 12 hour shifts squashed together, vibing and joking to avoid boredom and show off and add levity to an otherwise traumatic set of job duties. None of this increased understanding absolves anyone of brutality charges, but I think context is the first step towards solving massive problems.
Also, this book is extremely long and full of detail. I feel like this is a bit of a nod to the endlessness of humanity that cops deal with, but maybe Conlon just had that much to say.
October 22, 2011
This book is the story of the author's years in the NYPD up too September 11, 2001. In some ways humanizes the the police, who could certainly use it right now given how they've handled the Wall Street Protests and overusing "stop and frisk" policies. Often it seemed as petty and whiney as anyone complaining about the politics and unfairness of a job. Of course that is interspersed with the adrenaline associated with getting searcch warrents and arresting some pretty heinous people.
It's a long book and many times I wanted to give up on it and move on. For some reason I couldn't. Perhaps because it was a look into what could be considered a secret world that the public-at-large can be greatly affected by but never sees into. In the end I gave up just before the end and then contemplated what really bothered about the book.
In the almost 500 pages of this book women are totally marginalized. To this guy, they are never really full human beings -- just wives, mothers, girlfriends, junkies, etc. -- archetypes thats are always peripheral somehow to the NYPD. Only his male colleagues are real with feelings and failures and seen in their entirety. And the sad part is, he was really trying to make them real. One can only imagine how dismissive the rest of NYPD is. Even the female officers were skimmed over. It saddened and frightened me, and made clear that one of the largest problems with the agency is that it has male group think and could benefit from a more balanced view on gender roles. Sexism and racism go hand-in-hand and neither are valuable in an agency that serves the public.
It's a long book and many times I wanted to give up on it and move on. For some reason I couldn't. Perhaps because it was a look into what could be considered a secret world that the public-at-large can be greatly affected by but never sees into. In the end I gave up just before the end and then contemplated what really bothered about the book.
In the almost 500 pages of this book women are totally marginalized. To this guy, they are never really full human beings -- just wives, mothers, girlfriends, junkies, etc. -- archetypes thats are always peripheral somehow to the NYPD. Only his male colleagues are real with feelings and failures and seen in their entirety. And the sad part is, he was really trying to make them real. One can only imagine how dismissive the rest of NYPD is. Even the female officers were skimmed over. It saddened and frightened me, and made clear that one of the largest problems with the agency is that it has male group think and could benefit from a more balanced view on gender roles. Sexism and racism go hand-in-hand and neither are valuable in an agency that serves the public.
January 25, 2013
Blue Blood tells the story of Edward Conlon's campaign from Harvard English major graduate to gold shield NYPD Detective. While chronicling his own journey, he also peppers readers with info about his family and general NYPD history. I enjoyed it; though, it runs a little long, coming in at over five hundred pages. Fielding domestic violence calls--which he doesn't seem to think much of--and the like, he tires of the smallness of patrol, acquiring a taste for chasing drugs and guns, not because of having made any case as to why that might be more important, but because it was simply more fun. He perfectly captures the ineffectiveness of poor leadership, the degree to which human pettiness can find a friend in the mechanisms inherent in a large bureaucracy. I completely understand his frustrations with juries that refuse to return indictments or guilty verdicts because of biases against the police or "the system." His interactions with illogical prosecutors who are afraid of trying cases and are constantly looking for easy ones that result in guilty pleas rang true with what I've seen in bigger jurisdictions. I've spoken with detective friends, trying to find someone to talk to about the book with, but I keep getting the same response: "that's the book by the Harvard plant that got a job as a cop for the purpose of writing his book." I don't think that he got the job to be able to write the book, but I do think that he knew at the time of taking the job that he would write a book about his experiences.
May 16, 2010
I was actually surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this book (the three stars was more a reflection of the subject matter, as opposed to its treatment.) This book was part of my non-fiction foundation reading, under "True Crime", and so I thought it was going to be a single crime or criminal. Instead it was the autobiography of Edward Conlon and his time in the NYPD, as well as his research of his ancestors who had preceded him in law enforcement.
I appreciated the way Edward Conlon handled his subject matter in that it wasn't flashy, trying to emulate a Law & Order or CSI, nor was it heavy on jargon, to show off that Conlon was on the inside. Instead, it seemed Conlon did his best to present as honest a picture of his time as possible---exhibiting the thrill of an investigation mixed with the boredom of waiting and the frustration at the politics. As Conlon transitions from post to post, he intersperses his story with history of both the NYPD as well as the NYC area, and of his own family as well.
Again, I was really struck at the down-to-earth manner of the author, and it allowed me to feel friendly with him. If I had to describe the book in one sentence, I'd say reading it felt like sitting with Conlon on patrol--sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's slow, and the entire time you just yak and shoot the breeze; and at the end of the day, you know the person a little better.
I appreciated the way Edward Conlon handled his subject matter in that it wasn't flashy, trying to emulate a Law & Order or CSI, nor was it heavy on jargon, to show off that Conlon was on the inside. Instead, it seemed Conlon did his best to present as honest a picture of his time as possible---exhibiting the thrill of an investigation mixed with the boredom of waiting and the frustration at the politics. As Conlon transitions from post to post, he intersperses his story with history of both the NYPD as well as the NYC area, and of his own family as well.
Again, I was really struck at the down-to-earth manner of the author, and it allowed me to feel friendly with him. If I had to describe the book in one sentence, I'd say reading it felt like sitting with Conlon on patrol--sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's slow, and the entire time you just yak and shoot the breeze; and at the end of the day, you know the person a little better.
June 1, 2011
The only reason I finished this is that some circumstances conspired to give me time in March when I was confined to a sedentary position. And my book club picked it, and I feel compelled to finish book club books. (Even if no one else does – and no one else did this time – it’s a self-imposed compulsion – no peer pressure in my awesome book club!) That and wanting to get to the part where the NYC cop describes his perspective on 9/11. Conlon is no slouch – to be honest, it was like talking with my Hopkins sweetheart who was from Long Island – very smart, but with that “New Yawk” thing goin’ on. (Maybe THAT is why I finished it – nostalgia.) In any case, parts of it were a good read – the insider’s perspective on police work told by someone who has compassion tempered by realism and a philosophical worldview influenced by a strong sense of history. But it seems like Conlon felt like he had to put ALL of his buddies in it since ALL of his buddies would try to find their names in it. His editors should have been more forceful – especially with someone who is used to writing New Yorker articles. He could have used a more strident hand in shaping something of this size.
January 9, 2008
I bought this book a long, long time ago because the author is the brother of my high school history teacher, and I thought it was too neat a connection to pass up. It languished on my book shelf until recently, when my increasing desire to become an assistant U.S. Attorney someday led me to start reading more about law enforcement and crime.
This book isn't what I thought it was going to be. There aren't many terribly frightening true crime stories or crazy casts of characters or exposes of the NYPD. Instead, I think, the book is much truer to real policework - it's about the day to day of a patrolman/drug cop/detective and, in turn, about the day to day life of the Bronx, where Conlon was stationed. The book's not perfect - it can be meandering at times and there are so many names and abbreviations, it can be a little hard to keep track of it. But I would recommend it, if only because it is tremendously honest - and thus, illuminating of a world few people know much about.
This book isn't what I thought it was going to be. There aren't many terribly frightening true crime stories or crazy casts of characters or exposes of the NYPD. Instead, I think, the book is much truer to real policework - it's about the day to day of a patrolman/drug cop/detective and, in turn, about the day to day life of the Bronx, where Conlon was stationed. The book's not perfect - it can be meandering at times and there are so many names and abbreviations, it can be a little hard to keep track of it. But I would recommend it, if only because it is tremendously honest - and thus, illuminating of a world few people know much about.
September 16, 2014
Edward Conlon is a NYC cop; he is Irish, his Uncle Eddie was a cop, his great-grandfather was a cop, his father was an FBI agent. He was educated at Harvard but by temperament, culture and family background he was a natural to become a NYC cop. I guess Harvard helped in his writing skill, although he seems a natural at that too. His sardonic humor, his emotions on and about the job whether boredom, camaraderie, adrenaline rush, and his sense of history all make him a great storyteller. He is very funny and often likeable and admirable. I've never liked cops too much, probably regarding them much as cops regard the Internal Affairs Bureau; necessary but to be avoided if at all possible, and full of inconsistencies and injustices. Reading this book gave me a much broader view of and sympathy for cops and what and who they deal with on a daily basis. Edward Conlon keeps it real. He covers the years 1995 when he first became a cop, through 2001 and the tragedy of 9/11, into 2002 when he receives his detective badge.
Recommended.
Recommended.
August 4, 2009
I hauled this book around for ages, because it's gigantic and complicated and full of characters. But I kept going back to it, even though it weighed a ton and I had to remember who all of the people were (and half of them had nicknames too).
It's a fascinating combo of day-to-day life on the streets as a cop/NYPL history/author biography. Conlon made me think about a lot of things from the police perspective, and that was interesting. The bureaucracy sounds mind-boggling and the politics ridiculous.
Reviews stress the whole Harvard-educated thing, which really isn't much of the book--just in case you're looking for the went-to-Harvard-became-a-cop story. If anything, Harvard ends up seeming like the exception in the author's life, not becoming a police officer.
It's long and complicated and heavy (did I mention that it's a rather large book?). But it's really well-written and engaging and I'm glad I persevered.
It's a fascinating combo of day-to-day life on the streets as a cop/NYPL history/author biography. Conlon made me think about a lot of things from the police perspective, and that was interesting. The bureaucracy sounds mind-boggling and the politics ridiculous.
Reviews stress the whole Harvard-educated thing, which really isn't much of the book--just in case you're looking for the went-to-Harvard-became-a-cop story. If anything, Harvard ends up seeming like the exception in the author's life, not becoming a police officer.
It's long and complicated and heavy (did I mention that it's a rather large book?). But it's really well-written and engaging and I'm glad I persevered.
August 31, 2011
"Do you like beiong a cop?"
"I love it, when it doesn't suck, sir."
A cop's day can go from the mundane to the heroic, from the absurd to the tragic and back again in a single day. Edward Conlon joined the NYPD in 1995, at age 30. His Harvard English degree is put to good use in this monumental and well written account of a cop's life.
The tales from the street will make you laugh, break your heart, make you want to beat your head against the wall. It relates how a good boss can take months or years to build a cohesive, effective team, and a bad boss, or a petty one, can destroy it in a matter of weeks. It tells the stories of iconic NYPD events, both good and bad, the French Connection, Louima, Diallu, 9/11. It tells the stories of his great-grandfather, a corrupt NYPD cop and his uncle Eddie, a good one, and his father, a respected FBI agent.
At 562 pages, this is not a quick read, but I found it fascinating.
"I love it, when it doesn't suck, sir."
A cop's day can go from the mundane to the heroic, from the absurd to the tragic and back again in a single day. Edward Conlon joined the NYPD in 1995, at age 30. His Harvard English degree is put to good use in this monumental and well written account of a cop's life.
The tales from the street will make you laugh, break your heart, make you want to beat your head against the wall. It relates how a good boss can take months or years to build a cohesive, effective team, and a bad boss, or a petty one, can destroy it in a matter of weeks. It tells the stories of iconic NYPD events, both good and bad, the French Connection, Louima, Diallu, 9/11. It tells the stories of his great-grandfather, a corrupt NYPD cop and his uncle Eddie, a good one, and his father, a respected FBI agent.
At 562 pages, this is not a quick read, but I found it fascinating.
May 6, 2022
Overall, this book was a good read. It was also a difficult read. It is rather long and meandering at times and sometimes is out of order. Chapter length is also a bit much. As for writing Det. Conlon is a great story teller and his writing is a great conversational style.
August 5, 2012
The real thing. Conlon shares his experience as a NYPD policeman. He includes interesting background on the department's past and his family's law enforcement background. And he tells tales of his various assignments from foot patrol in the projects to robbery, rape and murder investigations. He ends with his promotion to detective.
"there were detours and diversions that were horrific, or hilarious, or haunting, or all of them at once."
He is a good writer and a good person and he grapples with many of the issues of law enforcement.
He includes his experiences sifting through the 9-11 rubble at Killing Fields looking for body parts and "identifiables".
I was left with a feeling of gratitude that there are people who are willing to deal with the city politics and bureaucracy to work with the dregs of society and their victims to find some dignity and justice.
"there were detours and diversions that were horrific, or hilarious, or haunting, or all of them at once."
He is a good writer and a good person and he grapples with many of the issues of law enforcement.
He includes his experiences sifting through the 9-11 rubble at Killing Fields looking for body parts and "identifiables".
I was left with a feeling of gratitude that there are people who are willing to deal with the city politics and bureaucracy to work with the dregs of society and their victims to find some dignity and justice.
July 1, 2015
3.5 stars I enjoyed this book overall, but I did have mixed feelings. On the positive side, the author paints a pretty vivid picture of what day to day police work is like and it's as gritty a world as you probably imagined. One of the main parts of this narrative deals with Conlon's plotting to make detective in the NYPD. while I could feel the frustration of the false starts, dead ends, and wacky politics, the book does get a bit bogged down in the middle. Frankly, if I were the editor, I would have trimmed that part a bit because the personality conflicts between Conlon and his rather feckless (at least he comes off that way) boss get monotonous. Even so, this is a great look behind the curtain at what police work is really like. I could see romantic suspense and police procedural authors finding this book especially useful.
September 11, 2016
I found this look into the life of a New York City policeman very interesting. However, it did not seem to have any continuity. It seemed like it was a collection of stories about life as a cop but it also seemed to jump back and forth through Edward Conlon's life. The history of the NY police department was really fascinating and I will probably want to read again on this topic. I found the coverage of 9/11 matter of fact and respectful of the men and women that lost their lives and the difficulty of the ones that had to clean up after the attack.
November 7, 2012
This is written by a fourth generation NYPD officer. He talks about his time on the job and what he found out about his relatives that were also on the job. You get history of the NYPD, NYC, and crime in the city. The part of the book where he talks about his part in the aftermath of 911 is heart rending. He can be very funny and it is an amazing look behind the scenes of the biggest police department in the world.
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