The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known--and cautiously avoided--by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad. Through the eyes of one broken family--two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

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.

Intelligent writing, intense characters, a dark sense of humor, innovative editing, and complex plots--Homicide: Life on the Street has raised the caliber of television police drama Homicide: Life on the Street is addictive television. Each week we watch to see who Detective Pembleton will spar with in "the Box," or what conspiracy theories Detective Munch will be espousing as the truth, but more than anything we tune in to see the gritty reality that makes this show the best police drama to ever grace the small screen. There aren't any car chases, rarely any shootouts, and sometimes the cases don't get solved. Instead, these detectives keep their clothes on, have a relentlessly morbid sense of humor, and catch the criminals because they have brains, not necessarily brawn. In other words, they're real. Homicide: Life on the Street, The Unofficial Companion by David P. Kalat--the first and only full-length guide to this Emmy Award-winning and three-time Peabody Award-winning television series--brilliantly captures the essence of this groundbreaking show. You'll Learn About: famed filmmaker Barry Levinson's decision to bring Homicide to television instead of making a film of David Simon's novel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets the behind-the-scenes anecdotes about cast regulars, including the onscreen clutches that led to offscreen romances the producers' many battles with the network suits over poor placement in the schedule, and the series' repeated trips to the land known as hiatus cast casualties--why they left or were let go the esteemed cast--including Andre Braugher, Ned Beatty, Daniel Baldwin, and Yaphet Kotto, among others--the characters they've created, and their beyond-Homicide careers season-by-season critiques of each episode Revealing, resourceful, and thoughtful, Homicide: Life on the Street, the Unofficial 0Companion is a must-have for any fan!

"Entertaining and thought-provoking, Burke blends vignettes from his time on the beat with deeply considered ideas on policing." —Newsweek For more than 30 years, involving more than 1,000 cases, Doyle Burke has been a death investigator, first with the Dayton, Ohio police department, then with a county coroner’s office. In this book, he shares his tricks of the trade: how detectives solve cases, what they look for, the importance of forensic science, and the irreplaceable value of instinct. Along the way, Burke offers humorous trial anecdotes, thoughts on race and policing, stories about the fatal toll stress took on fellow officers, and, perhaps most movingly, details about the three fatal shootings of police officers – one of them one of his first friends on the department, another the son of his sergeant – that he had to investigate. Part memoir, part police procedural, and part true crime anthology, Death as a Living reveals the inside world of homicide and death investigation―the triumph, tragedy, humor, and truly bizarre situations one finds when working that beat.

"An oral history of HBO"s The Wire"--

An NPR Best Book of 2014 A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection A "bleak and brilliant" (Minneapolis Star Tribune) debut novel ,"one of the finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory, a book that stands alongside Richard Ford's Rock Springs, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, James Welch's Fools Crow." (William Kittredge) Steeped in a lonesome Montana landscape as unyielding and raw as it is beautiful, Kim Zupan's The Ploughmen is a new classic in the literature of the American West. At the center of this searing, fever dream of a novel are two men—a killer awaiting trial, and a troubled young deputy—sitting across from each other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: John Gload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest. With a disintegrating marriage further collapsing under the strain of his night duty, Millimaki finds himself seeking counsel from a man whose troubled past shares something essential with his own. Their uneasy friendship takes a startling turn with a brazen act of violence that yokes together two haunted souls by the secrets they share, and by the rugged country that keeps them.

Offers a behind-the-scenes view of the elite LAPD Homicide Special unit in action as they undertake investigations into the murder of a Russian call girl, the shooting of a gangster's daughter, and other cases.