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Report to the Commissioner

James Mills

3.58 · Rating details · 90 ratings · 22 reviews

A police procedural complete down to photstats of the forms. It features an internal affairs investigation.

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Hardcover, 284 pages

Published June 1st 1972 by Farrar Straus Giroux

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Sep 20, 2019 Ali Nili rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

«تصور کنین؛ دو تا آدم مسلح دارن تو خیابون می‌دون که تازه یکی‌شون هم فقط شورت پاشه ولی از پلیس هیچ خبری نیست.»

داستان به صورت مصاحبه با افراد دخیل توی یک قتل نقل میشه. نیمه‌ی اول داستان بیشتر وظیفه‌ی فضاسازی و مطرح کردن پلات رو داره. توی همین نیمه کتاب به قدری خوش‌خوانه که سخت میشه کتاب رو زمین گذاشت. اما نیمه‌ی دوم که وارد خود جریان اصلی میشه کاری می‌کنه که عملا نمیشه کتاب رو رها کرد.

نویسنده توی کتاب از ایده‌ی خیر در مقابل شر گذر می‌کنه و ایده‌ی خیر در مقابل خیر رو علم می‌کنه. با این کار تعاریف ...more

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Nov 09, 2020 Narengii rated it liked it · review of another edition

خیلی خیلی قابل پیش‌بینی بود و اواسط کتاب کاملا مشخص بود که قراره روند داستان چی باشه و من ترجیح میدم کتابی تو این سبک غیرقابل پیش‌بینی‌تر باشه

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Mar 01, 2020 Mohammad Mirzaali rated it liked it · review of another edition

رمان پلیسی مهیج و خوش‌خوانی بود و بر اساس متن بازجویی‌ها، گزارش‌ها و حتا مقالات روایت می‌شد. همان اول متوجه می‌شوید که یک مأمور پلیس، مأموری دیگر را کشته و داستان بیش‌تر به مقدمات و حوادث پیش از قتل مربوط است. ترجمه، کاغذ، قطع و چاپ هم که عالی ست

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May 08, 2020 Aida Es rated it liked it · review of another edition

داستان پلیسی جالبیه که بیشتر به صورت گزارش روایت میشه و در دل داستان نژادپرستی، فساد و مافیا رو در سیستم نشون می‌ده. به نظر من فراتر از یک رمان پلیسی-جنایی بود.

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Jun 13, 2020 Shahrzad rated it it was ok · review of another edition

کتاب خوش‌خوانی یه
داستانش هم جذابه ولی یه جاهایی زیادی و بی‌خودی کش میده

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Dec 02, 2019 Malihe63 rated it did not like it · review of another edition

زیاد از خوندنش لذت نبردم یه داستان پلیسی خیلی معمولی

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Mar 27, 2020 Bookish girl sahar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

روایتی مستند از ماجرای به قتل رسیدن كارآگاهی جذاب و شجاع به نام پاتريشيا باتلر، که از ماموران مخفی اداره ی مبارزه با مواد مخدر آمريكاست؛

جیمز میلز روزنامه‌نگار و نویسنده سبک پلیسی جنایی آمریکایی است. اثر دیگرش «امپراطوری زیرزمینی» هم مستندی است در مورد مافیای مواد مخدر در آمریکا. که هر دویشان از پر فروش های نیویورک تایمز هستن.
بر اساس این کتاب یک فیلم هم ساخته شده است.

یه رمان پلیسی جذاب و سرگرم کننده. ترجمه خوب و روونی هم داره و خیلی خوش خوانه. اگر داستان پلیسی سبک رئال دوست دارین گزینه ی خیلی خو ...more

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May 29, 2014 John rated it really liked it

Very hurried notes . . .

A book I've been meaning to read for decades, and one that didn't disappoint.

Told in documentary form -- interview transcripts, completed PD forms, etc. -- this tells of how a young NYPD detective, Lockley, following the instructions of superiors who'd underestimated his abilities, inadvertently tracked and shot an undercover Narcotics Bureau operative, then pursued the pusher she'd been spying on until both men were trapped in a sort of Mexican standoff in a Saks Fifth A ...more

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Mar 26, 2020 Farhang Fassihi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

سبک جدیدی از رمان‌های پلیسی است. با سبک‌های سنتی‌تر مثل پوآرو، خانم مارپل یا شرلوک هلمز متفاوت است. ولی در نوع خود جذاب و خواندنی بود.

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Jan 29, 2021 Ann rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery

A Shakespearean tragedy in bureaucratese! I give this book a bonus point for the original format.

Imagine New York City in 1975 : a city struggling with a heroin epidemic, a corrupt police force, ingrained racism and the general post-Watergate disillusionment. In this volatile environment, a young (male) cop is found to have shot another (female, undercover) cop. In a succession of facsimiles of police reports, transcripts from tape recordings of witnesses, intake forms from jail, a psychiatry wa ...more

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Feb 16, 2016 Miles Fowler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: female-cop, homicide, mock-report, narcotics, police, procedural, thriller, undercover

This early 1970s thriller as well as the 1975 movie based on it hold up even after several decades, but the novel approach of the novel 14told as if it were a true story, taken directly from the official investigative report 14does have more verisimilitude as a book than a movie.

Author James Mills 19 conceit is that a detailed New York City police report has been leaked to him and he has merely arranged the constituent reports and interviews without inserting his own narrative. Nice trick. Of c This early 1970s thriller as well as the 1975 movie based on it hold up even after several decades, but the novel approach of the novel 14told as if it were a true story, taken directly from the official investigative report 14does have more verisimilitude as a book than a movie.

Author James Mills 19 conceit is that a detailed New York City police report has been leaked to him and he has merely arranged the constituent reports and interviews without inserting his own narrative. Nice trick. Of course, the entire book consists of the author telling a story through fake reports and interviews. The over-all effect is convincing. (Except that he has a psychiatrist 19s report describe a patient 19s 1Ceffect 1D when the word a shrink would use is 1Caffect. 1D The author 19s knowledge of police procedures is presumably better than his knowledge of psychiatry.)

The fake report technique allows the story to be told from different viewpoints and from varying degrees of distance. At the beginning and end we get dry reports that first intrigue us but at last regretfully take us away from the story. In between, the interviews acquaint us with the characters and their part in the story through their own words. The initial crime reports raise more questions than they answer. A police detective named Beauregard 1CBo 1D Lockley kills an undercover police detective named Patty Butler. Why? How did that happen? Was it an accident or a murder? Through alternating interviews (plus an unpublished magazine interview with Butler, a copy of which had been given to the police department for approval), we get pieces of the story and also come to see that without understanding who these people are, their actions would be even less understandable.

By interviewing different characters and asking each what he makes of the others, Mills 19 Internal Affairs investigator, Captain Strichter, effectively gives us different perspectives on each individual. The reader must sort through these different versions and draw his own conclusions, though Mills skillfully leads us to favor some conclusions over others. Is Lockley jealous over Patty? Probably not overtly, but he himself says 1Cmaybe. 1D Is he blinded by job frustrations, romantic fantasies, or his father 19s expectations? Despite initial impressions and secondary misgivings, does he have the potential to become a good police officer or is Det. Richard 1CCrunch 1D Blackstone, Lockley 19s partner, right that somebody should have saved Lockley a lot of trouble and told him upfront that this job was never for him? Butler is an intriguing figure in an early 1970s novel. She is only 22 and one of the most successful narcotics officers in the department, having lured more drug dealers into selling drugs to her than any of her colleagues. Some officers, including one of the interviewees, are dismissive, thinking that she has an unfair advantage in being able to bat her eyes and get what she wants, but others note that her job is very dangerous even though she herself dismisses the risks. Is Butler brave or foolhardy or a little of both?

One of the characters, Thomas Henderson a/k/a the Stick, remains distant from us until the last few chapters. We first meet him through the hearsay of people who do not really know him. For a while, we know him mainly from his police dossier which outlines his rise from an impoverished inner city childhood to captaincy of a drug ring before the age of 20. However, during the last few chapters, he and Bo Lockley spend twenty-two hours together in an enclosed space, and Lockley 19s account of these hours most nearly brings the Stick to life.

A gritty description of New York 19s Times Square in the early 1970s is at the heart of the novel. As someone who was young and occasionally in New York at that time, reading this novel now makes me aware of how historical that period has become. At one point, Lockley is in Times Square and he needs to call his superior. Nowadays, no problem: just pull out your cell phone and call the lieutenant. But in 1971, cell phones were science fiction, and Lockley has to find a pay phone. But the numerous pay phones along the street have all been vandalized and are completely useless. He has to find a hotel with working phones in the lobby. Meanwhile, Lockley has left his only friend, a legless war veteran named Joey Eagan, to watch his suspects until he returns. This proves a major challenge because in order to follow them from 47th to 38th streets Eagan has to chase them on a skate board propelled by his hands. When Lockley finds Eagan, the vet 19s hands are bloody from pounding the concrete with his knuckles for some ten blocks. Why did Eagan do this for Lockley? We learn that Lockley is the only person who treats Eagan as a human being rather than a freak. It tells you something about Eagan and something about Lockley.

The point of the titular report to the police commissioner is to get to the bottom of the case and find out whether Lockley is solely to blame or if others are shirking their responsibility for the scandal. Thus, another source of conflict is the police brass, the lieutenants and captains and deputy chiefs who spend too much of their time worrying about office politics. Although it has tragic consequences, the corruption in this novel is contained, but the question remains as to whether there is anything wrong with the system. What, at any point along the way, could others have done to make this situation right before it went so wrong?

This novel was written roughly around the time of a major investigation into police corruption in New York City. Famously, a police officer named Frank Serpico testified that corrupt police were numerous enough to be able to intimidate honest police officers into silence and complicity. I am reminded of the case of a New York policeman who was battling corruption in the late 1980s. A mutual friend arranged for him to speak to Serpico, who had been retired for nearly twenty years by then. In the middle of the active policeman 19s description of his difficulties getting police officials to combat corruption, Serpico began to laugh uncontrollably. The police officer asked what was so funny, and Serpico apologized. It was not that any of this was funny, but it made him realize that nothing had really changed since 1970. ...more

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Aug 20, 2020 Zara Karami rated it really liked it · review of another edition

#معرفی_کتاب
یه ماجرای پلیسی رو اگه بخوای جذاب تعریف کنی باید سوژه‌های جذابی داشته باشی. تعریف کردن جرم و جنایت به تنهایی کششی برای خواندن نداره. پس یه مامور مخفی داری: یه دختر خوشگل و خوش‌تیپ. بلوندی که نگاه‌ها رو به خودش جذب می‌کنه. این دختر که می‌تونه به راحتی یه مدل باشه، لابه‌لای معتادا می‌گرده تا موادفروش‌ها رو به دام بندازه. در محله‌ی ترسناکی مثل هارلم جولان میده و بین مامورای مخفی بالاترین میزان دستگیری رو داره. کار خطرناکیه. باید بتونی اعتماد موادفروش‌ها رو به دست بیاری و مواظب باشی که ل #معرفی_کتاب
یه ماجرای پلیسی رو اگه بخوای جذاب تعریف کنی باید سوژه‌های جذابی داشته باشی. تعریف کردن جرم و جنایت به تنهایی کششی برای خواندن نداره. پس یه مامور مخفی داری: یه دختر خوشگل و خوش‌تیپ. بلوندی که نگاه‌ها رو به خودش جذب می‌کنه. این دختر که می‌تونه به راحتی یه مدل باشه، لابه‌لای معتادا می‌گرده تا موادفروش‌ها رو به دام بندازه. در محله‌ی ترسناکی مثل هارلم جولان میده و بین مامورای مخفی بالاترین میزان دستگیری رو داره. کار خطرناکیه. باید بتونی اعتماد موادفروش‌ها رو به دست بیاری و مواظب باشی که لو نری.
تا همین‌جا، این پیرنگ (پلات) خیلی جون‌داریه‌ برای یک داستان پرکششی که مخاطب رو با خودش همراه کنه، ولی جیمز میلز بیشتر از این‌ها در چنته داره تا داستانش رو از یک اثر صرفا سرگرم‌کننده به یک داستان فراموش نشدنی تبدیل کنه.
از بین ویژگی‌های ممتاز کتاب دست می‌ذارم رو نحوه‌ی روایت این داستان. این کتاب در زمان خودش یک نوآوری بود، چون ماجرا رو به صورت بازجویی تعریف می‌کنه. از ابتدای کتاب قاتل و مقتول معلوم‌اند و ادامه بیشتر تمرکز می‌کنه به برداشتی که بقیه از قتل دارند. سیاست، منفعت‌طلبی و آدم‌فروشی شخصیت‌ها را می‌توان از میان گزارش‌ها فهمید. از دل این گزارش‌ها خیلی موارد دیگه رو هم میشه بیرون کشید؛ مثل این‌که چقدر راحت قانون برای سفید نگه داشتن دامن‌اش پشت قانون‌گذاران رو خالی میکنه. ...more

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Jun 23, 2018 Bryan D rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a well written novel that felt so authentic that I double checked the back to ensure that it was indeed fiction.
The tale of the investigation surrounding the death of an undercover narcotic officer and how another undercover cop and a drug kingpin ended up in a gun stand-off in a locked elevator for almost a day is told through documentations including interviews that were sent to the Police Commissioner.
It's set in 1971, my edition was published in 1974 and the dialogue and descriptions ...more

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Jan 14, 2019 Cliff Morrison rated it it was amazing

I've read numerous police novels over the years, and "Report to the Commissioner," originally published in 1972, remains among the very best. Here as in nearly everything he's published, James Mills is excellent at plotting. The report centers on a character who attempts only to do the right thing and in the end is made to pay a terrible price. ...more

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Dec 06, 2020 BAback rated it liked it · review of another edition

🖋️ یک داستان پلیسی جنایی با درون مایه روانشناختی. نگاهی به وضعیت پلیس در دهه ٧٠ آمریکا و مشخصا نیویورک. داستان _آنگونه که از عنوان پیداست_ روایت گزارشی است که برای کمیسر تهیه شده و در کتاب بصورت بازجویی هایی از کسانی که نقشی در اتفاق دارند،شکل گرفته. ترجمه خوب و روان بود و از همه بهتر و دوستداشتنی تر، شکل و شمایل کتاب های خوب نشر بیدگل است.

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Dec 24, 2019 about my mind rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

« تصور کنین دو تا آدم مسلح دارن تو خیابون می‌دون که تازه یکی‌شون هم فقط شورت پاشه ولی از پلیس هیچ خبری نیست »

روایت مستند وار و مبتنی بر نوار کاست های ضبط شده از افراد درگیر در قضیه قتل یک مأمور مخفی مواد مخدر .

نثر روان و خیلی خوبی داشت ، این مهم برمیگرده به ترجمه خیلی خوب این اثر ...

جمله ای در آغاز داستان آورده شده که کلیت مفهوم این اثر را به زیبایی نمایان می‌کند : « بر خود ناظران چه کسی نظارت می‌کند ؟ »

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Jan 12, 2020 Bardia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

خیلی خفن بود. یه پایان توپ، توصیف‌هاش هم فوق‌العاده بود‌.

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Jun 19, 2020 Bob Box rated it liked it

Read in 1974. Absorbing police procedural.

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Mar 05, 2019 Peter Martin rated it really liked it

Extraordinarily gripping; reads like a true story of real-life events.

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Oct 10, 2019 Larisa Paulmeno rated it really liked it

In spite of the fact that the book is supposed to be composed of actual police reports and interviews, I can't put it down.
...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Anthony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

This novel is developed via actual NYPD reports and a story of scandal that will grip the reader report by report .

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About James Mills

James Mills

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James Mills is an American novelist, screenwriter and prize-winning journalist.

Mills wrote two New York Times bestsellers, Report to the Commissioner, a novel, and , a study of international narcotics trafficking. As a result, he testified before a panel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as an expert. His books The Panic in Needle Park and Report to the Commissioner were later made into major ...more