I had real misconceptions about this book before I read it. I thought it was all about killing and the gore of killing. As a female in my 20's, this was not a book I would have reached for on my own. Had my husband not insisted, I would not have read it and now I can't praise it enough and I would recommend it to everyone who cares about their society, everyone who wants to experience the amazing lives of people they would otherwise never know.
Read it for the writing, the superb organization, the accessible language, the incredible details. David Simon is an excellent writer and journalist. This book was long, but it was never boring because David Simon experimented with it. Sometimes he wrote from the detectives' point of perspective, sometimes the victims', sometimes the criminals themselves and sometimes from his own. He really captured Baltimore in the late 80s with his keen observation and perception of what is relevant. Some of the stories he covered are crazy, if it didn't say in large print that this was all true, I would not believe it. Some of the stories are funny, some are incredibly sad, but they are all interesting and are all a part of the regular lives of the Baltimore detectives and for that matter, probably detectives in every major city in the country. I cannot praise this book enough. After reading this book, I cannot ever watch CSI or Law and Order again with the same enthusiasm. You realize how much more complex real crimes are and you just end up laughing at those TV shows. You begin to understand police work and you have a new respect for those who have devoted their lives to solving crimes. David Simon was very fair in his book, he kept it real by telling you the good and the bad. You begin to see everyone involved as real people, the police, the criminals, and the victims.
The closer I got to the middle the slower I started to read ...fearing that last page. Excellant.Fierce 'Homicide' sweats reality from every pore. It's a masterful account of a year in the life of the Baltimore homicide division, and is packed with enough policework to fuel a dozen films and television series. It's never sensationalist, and throughout the course of the year we get to know the people who spend their lives running around in the dark - lots of little images stick with you, like the officers who go to crime scenes with 'Theme from Shaft' blaring on a portable cassette deck, or the frazzled officers who shout at corpses in a forlorn attempt to gain information from them, or the sweat-sodden shirts of the furnace-like night shift. Some crimes are solved, some crimes are not, and at the end you start to wonder why the policemen do the job they do, given that it entails lifting rotting bodies, and involves constant exposure to the worst things in the world without much financial recompense. You wonder why they don't just throw up their hands and give up - if the injustice doesn't get you, the office politics will. It gives a very good impression of the mind-numbing repetition of the job, without being at all boring. Throughout, Baltimore comes across as the futuristic Detroit from 'Robocop', and one can only imagine what a similar book set in Los Angeles would be like. Simon followed this up with 'The Corner', which trod a similar path but without being focused on the police.