This is America

Homicide, by David Simon; Death Dyed Blonde, by Stanley Reynolds

David Simon was a Baltimore Sun reporter who, having spent a Christmas Eve observing the city’s homicide squad, somehow got the department’s permission to spend an entire year with them as a ‘police intern’. The result, in 1991, was this stunning book, now published for the first time in this country, following the massive critical success of the television show Simon created, The Wire.

The Wire may be the first programme praised in the media by more people, at least in this country, than have seen it on screen, which may define a cult classic. When critics rhapsodise over its writing, they highlight the Washington novelist, George Pelecanos, a cult hero himself, Dennis (Mystic River) Lehane, or the novelist and screenwriter, Richard Price, who contributes an introduction to this volume. But the heart of the show’s writing is done by Simon and his ex-cop partner, Ed Burns, and after just a few pages of Homicide it’s easy to see why.

Homicide flows with the episodic drive of the best fiction, but Simon is too good a reporter to miss the real stories. His cops suffer as they pursue a Sisyphean task, their humanity challenged as they try to cope. Joseph Wambaugh milked the comedy from this years ago in fiction, but Simon’s people have the advantage of being real, both bigger than life and smaller than fiction. There are the criminals, who are usually punished by their own stupidity rather than by CSI-style forensic police work. Most tellingly, there are the victims. Simon’s genius is that through his cops he tells the victims’ story, of people abandoned by society to a world where poverty, addiction, and violence are the norm.