general

Make no mistake, the underlying crux of Conlon's endeavor is that he has an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard College and chose to do something as "blue collar" and "salt-of-the-Earth" as joing the NYC Housing Police in 1995, at the age of 30. That he had a successful string of New Yorker articles from 1997 to 2000 speaks as much to the upper-classes' fascination with the lives of average folks and the inherent novelty of a Harvard-trained street cop as it does about his ability to write, which is ostensibly much better than that of most police officers'.

A million-dollar book deal set the bar almost "unreachably high" for Conlon, who was tasked with turning his honorable but inevitably commonplace--at least as far as big-city policing is concerned--career of low-level narcotics enforcement into a book-length "epic." What he produced is a testament to these high expectations. Several years behind schedule, the finished book could only achieve its requisite length and narrative consistency by invoking worlds and worlds of information that comes from the oft-trodden ground of NYPD history: Serpico, the tumultous 1970's NYC, the fight that the urban poor engage in on a daily basis to retain their dignity, etc.

This is all delivered while necessarily sacrificing the dramatic tension that is evoked by the highest class of nonfiction writing: the drama that makes you feel like you were there, and the feelings in Conlon's guts are the feelings in your own. We are told a lot of things by Conlon in this book, but it is unclear that we are made to feel them.

A brief caution to readers who are considering buying this book after reading the highly favorable review of it in the NYT Book Review: the reviewer, Ted Conover, is another well-educated author qua uniformed civil servant. Three years ago, he wrote a book on being a corrections officer after spending two years working in New York's Sing Sing facility. Notwithstanding wondering if two years was long enough to figure out what you don't know in that type of job let alone what you have learned, it stands to reason that the success of Conlon's book is directly related to the success of the genre, and moreover to Conover's continuing sales. It seems a bit biased that Conover was even allowed to review a book about a writer who works in a uniformed service while taking notes so he can tell the public "what it's really like," especially when Conover's own book uses the same M.O. (no pun intended, of course) and is still relatively recent.

All this said, Blue Blood will take its place among the better works on policing. However, this was never a genre of masters to begin with, and it is even a slight insult all around to say that Conlon is a good writer, "for a cop." It would be very hasty to compare him to the true nonfiction giants of our time. Instead, this is a good book for the unacquainted who would like to be voyeurs into the world of policing.

The author is a Harvard-educated NYPD cop, son of an FBI agent, writing his memoirs seven years into his career on the force. Over the course of the book's 560 pages, he begins in Housing (drug busts in the projects), works with Narcotics, gets a feel for the midnight shift, sifts though the awful wreckage of 9/11 on Fresh Kills, and finally becomes a detective. Every so often, he interrupts his own story to tell some other facet of police or New York life, such as that of the real Serpico or the tale of the French Connection, stories of crooked and heroic cops and politicos of the past, the Black Panther cop-murder spree, and so forth. It's a very interesting book, with plenty of very funny bits (his descriptions of and banter with informants provide much humor) as well as food for thought. Certainly, though, it's no masterpiece. For someone who clearly bristles when talked to about police corruption, Conlon breezes over Abner Louima, and takes a very Blue Wall-ish view of the Amadou Diallo case. The book is also overlong; it could use some editing, especially given that there are no spectacular cases here (lots of gritty interrogation and stakeout stuff, but it is everyday police work). On the whole, though, the great writing, the eye for a relevant story, Conlon's intense devotion to the NYPD, and a real flair for characterization make this a memoir worth reading through.

Great insight into the wold of the NYPD!