Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon

Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon

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Blurb

From the creator of HBO’s The Wire, the classic book about homicide investigation that became the basis for the hit television show.

The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the center of this hurricane of crime is the city’s homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world.

David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and this electrifying book tells the true story of a year on the violent streets of an American city. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator; Harry Edgerton, a black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year’s most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.

Originally published fifteen years ago, Homicide became the basis for the acclaimed television show of the same name. This new edition–which includes a new introduction, an afterword, and photographs–revives this classic, riveting tale about the men who work on the dark side of the American experience.

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Review

This is not a romance novel, nor is it a work of fiction. It is, however, the basis for an extremely popular fictional television show, The Wire. I never watched The Wire, and I feel like I should tell you this in the interest of full disclosure. I had some qualms about reading this in light of the way things have been going in Baltimore (especially with regards to policing in Baltimore) over the past few years.

Well, not the past few years. Let’s be real here. (Spoiler alert: the book touches on this issue.)  But I’ve been aware of it for the past few years, so that’s where I am.

As an author, and specifically an author who writes about detectives who deal with race on a regular basis, I thought it was important for me to read this book. I know plenty of police officers, and I have my whole life. Cops aren’t a monolith, and it’s important to get a broad view of as many law enforcement points of view as possible if we’re going to write about them – especially if we’re not the sort of person who should ever work in law enforcement ourselves.

In fiction, especially in romance fiction, detectives always find out whodunnit. Reality isn’t that simple. Sometimes there simply aren’t any witnesses. Sometimes witnesses may exist, but be too intimidated to say anything. Sure, law enforcement can say they’ll keep witnesses safe, but who are you going to trust – someone who goes home to a different neighborhood at the end of the day, and who answers to a person with a different agenda, or someone who knows where you live, where your kids are at any given moment, and has a deep personal interest in you keeping silent?

Simon does a fantastic job of presenting the detectives of Baltimore’s Homicide department as whole human beings, warts (and halos) and all. They have personal issues, they face difficulties. They have challenges within the department, and with each other. They follow their cases with the kind of gallows humor a person would have to have in that kind of position, and they show some incredibly touching moments of empathy.

There’s rather less consideration shown by Simon toward most of the victims. To some extent, I can understand this. He’s not writing about murder victims, he’s writing about the detectives, and Baltimore had an exceptionally high murder rate during the period this book takes place. It would have been a much longer book. It would have eaten my tablet.

At the same time, it definitely rubbed me the wrong way when Simon let the detectives’ terminology slip into his prose. During a quote it’s fine, uncomfortable but fine. When he’s referring to a victim outside of a quote, he’s making a judgement call that’s outside of journalistic neutrality. Even if a person is a drug addict, a prostitute, or a homeless person, their life matters, it has dignity, and the violent end of that life deserves better than crude terms with racial overtones*.

Since we’re on this subject, the book does include some language that stands out to a modern eye – indeed, it makes me cringe. I’m not criticizing it when it’s used in a quote. The book is about cops in the late 1980s. It’s important to know what the mindset was, even when it’s harmful – especially when it’s harmful. There’s a scene involving a transgender woman that made me hate these detectives, and I wondered how they could go out and police a diverse community when they made the choice to treat her the way they did.

And then these men went out and acted with extraordinary kindness later on. (Not, it should be noted, toward anyone described as LGBTQ+.) 

I’m also curious as to the difference between a “homosexual murder” and a murder. I mean this is my whole job, right?

Ahem.

Anyway, the point of mentioning these comments is both to warn folks who may be sensitive to such things about their presence in this book and to draw attention to the difference between then and now. Officers following a trans woman around harassing her would be caught on camera by thirty different people, named, and shamed. There’s still a long way to go – a very long way – but standards are changing.

This book is not an up. It is, however, deeply informative on multiple levels. I’m grateful for the level of insight the book gives, even if that insight sometimes makes it difficult to look myself in the eye later.

* It is not for me to determine whether or not these words were racist in nature. They are terms I haven’t heard since the 80s and were only used for Black people; I am not Black. That said, the “n” word was not used.