Ghettoside: Investigating a Homicide Epidemic - Softcover

"Riveting ... extraordinary ... For long passages, it enveloped and transported me more completely than any other work of nonfiction I have ever read" (Ed Caesar Sunday Times)

"Lucid, revelatory, superbly written, incredibly timely. I was astonished by Jill Leovy's Ghettoside in which police and race in America are examined with forensic skill and furious, exceptional prose. Unmissable." (Chris Cleave)

"Exceptional. This book will take an honoured place on the shelf that includes David Simon's classic Homicide" (Martin Amis)

"Fantastic. Not just a gritty, heart-wrenching, and telling book, but an important one. Everyone needs to read this book" (Michael Connelly)

"The best crime journalism since Serial" (Esquire)

"Simply one of the finest books ever written about crime in LA – and crime in America, for that matter ... Tremendously touching ... astonishing ... achieves greatness through its ability to be both timely and timeless" (New Statesman)

"Superbly told. A provocative examination of how and why murder happens and a fast-paced crime narrative" (Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove)

"Mind-blowing in its forensic detail, Ghettoside's insight into post-Michael Brown, post-Eric Garner America cannot be overstated. This is the best corrective to all those who wring their hands in despair in the face of race, social justice and policing in the United States" (Rt Hon David Lammy, MP)

"‘Powerful, gripping ... What sets Ghettoside apart from the slew of factual police procedurals published every year, is a compelling analysis of the factors behind the epidemic of black-on-black homicide, and the beginnings of a policy prescription for tackling it. This makes Ghettoside an important book, which deserves a wide audience" (Hari Kunzru Guardian Book of the Week)

"It's to the author's credit that Ghettoside is so hard to put down, and that you wind up caring for everyone involved. When killers are caught, you don't feel victorious so much as sad. Another life wasted. Unlike a detective novel where you think, "Well, that happened," here there's the sense of the grinding wheel, one gang-related murder after another. On and on and on. It's relentless and brutal, and Jill Leovy's account of it is art." (David Cedaris, Book of the Month)

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Why would you kill your neighbour?

Based on the best part of a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, this groundbreaking work of reportage takes us onto the streets, inside the homes and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic.

Through the gripping story of one particular murder – of an eighteen-year-old boy named Bryant Tennelle, gunned down one evening in spring for no apparent reason – and of its investigation by a brilliant, ferociously driven detective – a blond, surfer-turned-cop named John Skaggs – it reveals the true origins of such violence, explodes the myths surrounding policing and race and shows that the only way to reverse the cycle of violence is with justice.