The Case of the Body in the Basement

I was a little late getting into The Wire - I first started watching it in early 2009 - but when I did get into it, let's just say I had a hard time getting out. When I finished the series around this time last year, I felt like there was a serious void in my life. That's when I started stalking creator David Simon and devouring all his other works, including The Corner (both book and miniseries) and his nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.
I'm currenly in the middle of re-reading Homicide. It is such a wonderful book, and potentially the best crime book I've ever read, either in fiction or nonfiction. The basis for the book is David Simon's true life experience trailing a group of homicide detectives in a Baltimore squad room. He shadowed these detectives for a year in the office, at crime scenes, in the morgue, at the bar, in court. He basically was a detective for a year (another dream job alert).

The beauty of this book is that it's not afraid to be a completely accurate documentation of what life is like for a homicide detective. Of course these guys take their jobs seriously as murder investigators, but come on, if you didn't find some way to laugh about dealing with death for a living, you wouldn't be able to make it through the days. The dry, slightly perverse sense of humor these guys have about their job is the book's strongest element and frankly, what makes it most interesting.

I actually found myself laughing out loud last night as I got to a scene where two detectives solve the murder of a furniture salesman in Baltimore's ghetto. The case was so ridiculous that even I could have cracked it. The killer left the body in his own basement before reporting to work! I guess sometimes, when you have to kill another dude over $10, it's a real hassle to move his body afterwards and you don't want to be late for your job. But the best part was that these real life detectives actually refer to the fact that they "cracked" the case, telling their boss, "What cracked this case is that the killer left the dead guy in his house."

Sometimes solving a murder really is as easy as 1-2-3!