Product Description

BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY AND A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST NAMEDONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes.

But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American murdera ghettoside killing, one young black man slaying anotherand a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our citiesand how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped.

Praise for

A serious and kaleidoscopic achievement . . . [JillLeovy is] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.Dwight Garner,

Masterful . . . gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.

Moving and engrossing.

Penetrating and heartbreaking . . .points out how relatively little America has cared even as recently as the last decade about the value of young black mens lives.

Functions both as a snappy police procedural andmore significantlyas a searing indictment of legal neglect . . . Leovys powerful testimony demands respectful attention.

Gritty, heart-wrenching . . . Everyone needs to read this book.Michael Connelly

is remarkable: a deep anatomy of lawlessness.Atul Gawande, author of

[Leovy writes] with grace and artistry, and controlledbut bone-deepoutrage in her new book. . . .The most important book about urban violence in a generation.

Riveting . . . This timely book could not be more important.Associated Press

Leovys relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insightsand it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that black lives matter.

A compelling analysis of the factors behind the epidemic of black-on-black homicide . . . an important book, which deserves a wide audience.Hari Kunzru,