Reddit Reddit reviews Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

We found 28 Reddit comments about Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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28 Reddit comments about Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets:

u/morsecoderain · 15 pointsr/funny

I guess you never read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets or The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, both by David Simon, creator of The Wire.

u/PoisonvilleKids · 14 pointsr/TheWire

As I say most times I hear a question about the background to The Wire and it's various characters: Homicide: A Year on The Killing Streets by David Simon holds all the answers, and is an absolutely fantastic read.

u/DoYouWantAnts · 8 pointsr/AskReddit

Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon (creator of The Wire). Non fiction account of him following around the Baltimore Homicide Unit for 1 year.

u/blackstar9000 · 7 pointsr/books
u/mphtmnslt · 7 pointsr/indianapolis

Empathy goes a long way to understanding why we're experiencing so much violence.

Recommended reading by David Simon: http://www.amazon.com/Homicide-A-Year-Killing-Streets/dp/0805080759

Or just watch The Wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH_6_8NOfwI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtz-w0Xouo

u/beginnersfalafel · 5 pointsr/television
u/lurking_quietly · 4 pointsr/TheWire

Of these projects, I most enjoyed The Wire. But it's worth evaluating each of these projects in terms of what they were trying to accomplish, since they all had different goals.

  1. Homicide: Life on the Street

    This was adapted from Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, but I don't know how much Simon worked on the show day-to-day.

    This show is much more of a crime procedural than any of the other works here. And with a few notable exceptions—e.g., Luther Mahoney or Brodie—the near-exclusive default point-of-view is that of the police.

    The show was groundbreaking for network TV at the time. For one thing, at least one of the main-cast characters was a cop who was an asshole and basically corrupt. This show also demonstrated that the bosses and their subordinates do not always see eye-to-eye, and not just in the "crusty-but-benign" way described in the movie Network, either. Most cop shows at the time didn't just show cops, but they identified with the cops' perspective. (This is still pretty common today.) This is legitimate, but showing that cops have human foibles which have on-the-job repercussions was taking a chance, especially for a network show at that time. And, like The Wire, it got critical acclaim but relatively small (but devoted!) audiences.

    The show's style was very different from that of, say, The Wire. For example, it had a non-diegetic score and camera moves that were more likely to draw attention to themselves. H:LotS also included collaborations with Baltimore native Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana. The latter went on to create HBO's Oz, and you can see plenty of influence there from Homicide.

    H:LotS was also able to attract high-level talent throughout its run. Not only was the regular and recurring cast very strong (as you'd likely expect, even without having seen a single episode), but it attracted a number of actors best known for their film work. As just one example, Robin Williams appeared in the second season premiere, playing the husband of a crime victim. Steve Buscemi played an odious racist. Arguably, though, the most memorable guest appearance was Moses Gunn as Risley Tucker, the sole suspect in the homicide of 11-year old Adena Watson. Gunn may not be a household name, but he's been in projects from the original Shaft to Roots to stage performances.

    Homicide was also remarkable, especially at the time, in that it shot on location in Baltimore. (For context, consider that Vancouver (almost) never plays itself; typically, a show at the time would be shot in New York or Los Angeles, even it it's set in another city.) It also helped establish some of the vocabulary familiar to those who've watched The Wire: "the box", "the board", etc.

  2. The Corner

    This was a six-part miniseries for HBO based on David Simon's book about real-life addicts and dealers. If Homicide was primarily a show from the perspective of the cops, The Corner introduced what life was really like for those who lived in places like West Baltimore.

    For me, Homicide was always more stylized in its aesthetic, but more traditional in the types of stories it tried to tell. It was groundbreaking relative to other cop shows, but it still chose the cops' vantage points as the default. The Corner inverted this.

    A lot of the content from The Corner will be familiar to those who've already seen The Wire. (And, conversely, those who've seen The Corner would have some useful frame of reference for the events depicted in The Wire.) One attribute The Corner clearly focused on was authenticity. Homicide was a solid show, but The Corner felt real. Much of the cast of The Corner reappears in The Wire, too. And some of the real-life people whose lives Simon chronicled in his book played minor characters on The Wire. One of the most notable examples was the late DeAndre McCullough, who played Brother Mouzone's assistant Lamar.

    Again: a killer cast. A good story, well-told. And, for a change-of-pace: even some Emmy nominations and wins!

  3. The Wire

    I trust you're all familiar with this, right? :)

    I think having laid some groundwork with the reporting which underlay Homicide and The Corner, The Wire had the basis to be incredibly ambitious. It told stories from the perspectives of cops and dealers and dope fiends and stevedores and City Hall and newspaper newsrooms. It also had a definite point-of-view, and it was unafraid to advocate for its argument, but by showing and not merely telling. Yes, it's about all the conflict between characters on all sides of the law. But it's also making some very important arguments: the drug war is unwinnable, and the consequences of that gratuitous futility are disastrous for countless people. Deindustrialization of big cities leaves the corner as the only employer in town. Actual reform that will have any kind of substantive effect will require something other than the standard bromides that have typically gotten politicians elected and re-elected. And so on.

  4. Generation Kill

    This is a seven-part HBO miniseries based on the book Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Ice Man, Captain America, and the New Face of American War by Evan Wright, documenting those American Marines who were the tip-of-the-spear in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As with The Corner and The Wire, this goes out of its way to convey authenticity, especially in the context of the military jargon. Oh, and you get to see Baltimore native James Ransone, who played Ziggy, as a Marine, too.

  5. Treme

    This is Simon's love letter to the city of New Orleans, set in the immediate aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. Again: a killer cast, including everyone from Clarke Peters (who played Lester) to Khandi Alexander (who played Fran Boyd on The Corner) to New Orleans native Wendell Pierce (Bunk Moreland) to John Goodman (in damn-near EVERY movie) to Stephen Colbert's bandleader Jon Batiste (as himself).

    For me, Treme was solid, but it was less compelling than The Wire. A lot of the goal of Treme was to show the importance and centrality of New Orleans to American culture, in everything from music to food. For me, that case seemed secondary to the lives of the characters themselves. Many of the themes from The Wire are familiar: indifferent institutions, crime and violence, etc. But it also has some ferociously good performances, amazing music performed live, and an important reminder that life for so many in New Orleans still wasn't really "after Katrina" yet, even years after the storm, because of just how much destruction was caused all around.

    Oh, and like The Wire (among others), Treme cast a lot of local New Orleans natives who lived through the storm, as well as musicians who hadn't grown up with training as actors.

  6. Show Me a Hero

    The title comes from an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy". Like The Corner, this is another six-part HBO miniseries adapted from a nonfiction book. It's about a huge fight that the city of Yonkers, NY had with federal courts by resisting efforts to remedy housing segregation.

    Some of the themes should be familiar: a stellar cast including Oscar Isaac, Winona Ryder (in a role I wouldn't have expected for her), Catherine Keener, Alfred Molina, and Clarke Peters (again). As you might have guessed from the quote, this story doesn't have a happy ending for everyone. The main theme is about how to do the right thing, especially as an elected official, in the face of violent opposition from much of the city, and what cost doing the right thing will entail.

  7. The Deuce

    This is a forthcoming David Simon series about the world around Times Square in the 1970s: pornography, just as it was becoming legalized, HIV/AIDS, drug use, and the economic conditions of the city at the time. Even if the whole team totally dropped the ball here, I'm sure this will be better than HBO's 1970s music drama Vinyl, at a minimum.

    The cast includes James Franco (playing twins), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anwan Glover (Slim Charles), Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. (D'Angelo Barksdale), Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris Partlow). Oh, and the pilot is being directed by Michelle MacLaren, whose directing credits include Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Westworld, among others.
u/rainmakereuab · 3 pointsr/AskMen

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (creator of the Wire). This book is quite simply fantastic. There are things that happen on the streets of Baltimore that will make you laugh and cry and just plain question how some people even exist. I can't remember the last time I read a book that took me through the range of emotions that this one has. Rendering experiences against the backdrop of murder tends to throw everything into a harsh perspective that makes it easy to see what really matters and what doesn't. It will transform how you look at the world, and I can think of no higher compliment for a book.

u/Manggo · 3 pointsr/books

My two favorites from recent times are the two books written by David Simon which sparked the HBO show "The Wire".

The Corner: A Year in the life of an Inner-City Neighborhood

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

The Corner follows a family, and others, in the streets of Baltimore. It's about drug addiction, the war on drugs, the welfare system, and the lives of families affected by these things.

Homicide is following the detective department of the Baltimore city police. I preferred this one to The Corner, but they are both great. They are both depressing, at times really funny, but always interesting and entertaining. Eye-opening too.

u/nickb64 · 2 pointsr/AskMen

I'm 21. I'm not sure what my favorite is, and there's a bunch of books that I haven't finished that I've enjoyed reading quite a bit.

I really enjoyed Unlearning Liberty by FIRE President Greg Lukianoff when I read it about 18 months ago.

I also really enjoyed David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which basically inspired the show The Wire. It's pretty high on the list, maybe my favorite book that I've read so far.

I've been reading Adam Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments since I heard a podcast interview with Russ Roberts, who wrote a book that's essentially about making Smith's ideas in the book more accessible to a modern audience. Smith's book is pretty tough to read because it's not very well organized and it was written in 1759, with a revised version published in 1790. I have found it a very interesting read so far.

u/_MormonBatman · 2 pointsr/PatriotTV

David Simon took a year off of work at the Baltimore Sun to follow Baltimore homicide detectives around. He wrote this book called Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets based on that experience. This research was the basis for 3 shows: Homicide: Life on the Streets, the Corner, and the Wire.

Have you seen Homicide? I think its first 3 seasons are objectively better than the Wire (in a way that Patriot isn't). It also has Frank Pembleton in it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgA3mOTQ2gA

u/huerequeque · 2 pointsr/books

I got hooked on the TV series The Wire, and a lot of its writers are also novelists and/or crime journalists: David Simon, George Pelecanos, and Richard Price. Dennis Lehane was also a writer for the show, but I haven't read anything of his yet.

u/linearcore · 2 pointsr/TheGreatWarChannel

I think it may even have been mentioned in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (what The Wire was based on). But it has been a while since I read that, so I don't remember.

Another tactic Connie Fletcher metioned: throw dry coffee grounds into a pan and put it on the stove to "cook" them. Helps cover the smell a bit. I would imagine troops in the trenches, though, wouldn't waste what precious coffee they got for that.

u/llcents · 2 pointsr/IAmA

The Wire is a (fictional) 5-season series from HBO that shows the most realistic depiction of the challenges of inner-city life - drugs, schools, police, political corruption, etc. Written by geniuses that took the time to completely understand every facet, including the sociological aspects as well as the economic. One of the creators, David Simon, was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun and spent many years covering the Baltimore Homicide detectives. He wrote the non-fiction book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" - which the later NBC police-drama "Homicide:Life on the Street" was based. Then, he teamed up with former Homicide Detective Ed Burns (who later retired and actually taught middle school in Baltimore for a while) and they collaborated on a non-fiction book called "The Corner" about the inner-city drug life, the war on drugs, and the ultimate decay of the modern urban center. The Wire was a fictional storyline based upon real characters and events from Simon's and Burns' past. It is often considered the best drama ever created for television.

u/strangenchanted · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

Dune by Frank Herbert.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. You have probably read it, but if you haven't, it's superbly funny sci-fi comedy.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A book that I re-read once every few years, and every time I find something new in it.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. A gripping, heartbreaking non-fiction book about police detectives. It inspired the acclaimed TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street." Simon would go on to create "The Wire."

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. Noir-ish procedural crime fiction. If you enjoy "Homicide," you may well like this.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, "a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968," according to Wikipedia. One of my favorite books.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Detective novel meets sci-fi in one mind-bending existential work. If you watch "Fringe," well, this book is Fringe-y... and more.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Time travel. Victorian England. A tea cozy mystery of sorts.

Graphic novels! Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman. Love And Rockets by The Hernandez brothers. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. And of course, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. To discover yet more great comic books, check out the Comics College series.

u/HestiaAlitheia · 2 pointsr/The_Donald

Yeah, exactly right. The creator is a guy named David Simon. I don't agree with any of his politics (he's a disaffected lefty), but he's a helluva storyteller. He wrote a book called Homicide: A Year on The Killing Streets that became the basis for the show Homicide: Life on The Street that was sort of his jumping off point for HBO and The Wire. He also created Generation: Kill which isn't as good but is still good storytelling.

In the book Homicide he, as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, followed around the same Homicide cops for an entire year in the late 80s in what turned out to be one of the deadliest years ever for that city. It's truly a sad story but a great read, if not a bit morbid. What has happened to our country?

We can't stand for this folks!

u/celticeejit · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

You don't need it it be fiction - read David Simon's Homicide

  • remarkable book - and the template for both Homicide and Wire series.


    but if you absolutely want fiction - Elmore Leonard (sadly passed away this week) - or James W. Hall, Ed McBain, Joseph Wambaugh, Donald Westlake, Robert Crais, Andrew Vachss

  • I can give you a short list of their best if you want (I'm a bit of a crime novel addict)
u/02J · 1 pointr/gaming

For those with Wire withdrawl I suggest.

  • Homocide: A year on the Killing Street. David Simon's experience over the course of a year with the Baltimore homocide unit.

  • The Corner. Again, based on the lives of real people. Basically, take the setting of The Wire, go back several years and focus on the people more than the police. Amazing series but, it's fucking heartbreaking, hard to watch at times.

  • [The Pusher Trilogy](http://www.amazon.com/Pusher-Trilogy-Nicolas-Winding- Refn/dp/B000I8OMEY/ref=sr_1_cc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291994237&sr=1-1-catcorr). A series of gritty crime films following characters from the Copenhagen underworld.

  • Books by George Pelecanos. He was a sometimes producer and writer for The Wire and other HBO series. His books centered around D.C. have a similar feel.
u/Lanthrum · 1 pointr/offmychest

No problem, I'm currently reading it now. Its quite Eye-opening. If you like that check out David Simon, author of Homicide a Year on the Killing Streets as well as [The Corner](http://www.amazon.com/The-Corner-Year-Inner-City- Neighborhood/dp/0767900316/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1374081268&sr=8- 5&keywords=a+year+on+the+killing+streets); both provide a sickening view of the urban decay currently facing inner city ghettos. One from the perspective of an Homicide Detective and the other from the actual drug dealers respectively. These together are what formed the backbone for The Wire, which i also suggest.

u/Dash_Carlyle · 1 pointr/ifyoulikeblank

You might like Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. Sandman Slim is more like Dr. Strange if he decided to be a private investigator. He wields magic and has a drinking problem. I found the first 2 novels to be entertaining, even if they are a bit lighter than The Dark Knight trilogy.

If detective novels are your thing check out Red Dragon. Heavier on the detective stuff than you might think, and it's about Hannibal Lecter.

For something about detectives, and how they actually work cases check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.

u/MisterItcher · 1 pointr/devops

This may be a bit unconventional, but I suggest that you read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Homicide-Killing-Streets-David-Simon/dp/0805080759

This is a book by the guy that eventually ended up being the producer for The Wire. It's about following every single lead you can to solve a case. I think it is a really valuable psychology lesson in how to approach difficult or "impossible" situations, which is something that happens a lot, especially early in your career when you are thrown into the deep end of the pool of technology.

In the DevOps field, I find it's more important to be extremely flexible and able to rapidly become a jack of many trades than a master of any specific tools or technology. Mastery will come in time with experience/exposure.

u/thelittletramp · 1 pointr/books

You mean Homicide?

u/unoriginalsin · 1 pointr/JusticeServed
u/CACuzcatlan · -1 pointsr/sanfrancisco

It's as real as shows get. It was created by a former homcide reporter for the Baltimore Sun and the show was on HBO (aka, uncensored). The creator, David Simon, also wrote the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

The characters (criminals, cops, and politicians) and most events on the show were based on real life. He takes liberties to make social/political commentary and to adapt to television, it's not a documentary. I recommend you give it a shot before dismissing it as just another cop show. This is far from your average cop show. In fact, I wouldn't even say it's a cop show. It's a show about the war on drugs and decline of the American city as told through the stories of cops, dealers, addicts, politicians, schools, and the media.