Saturday, June 6, 2020

Eleven crime titles that explore tensions between police & communities

Molly Odintz is the Associate Editor for CrimeReads. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople for years before her recent move up to New York City for a life in crime. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads she tagged eleven "crime novels that take us into the tensions between policing and communities, and between the wants of individuals and the cruel prejudice of an uncaring system," including:
Andrew Case, The Big Fear (Hollow City Series)

Andrew Case’s Hollow City series explores authoritarian abuse and police brutality more directly than most, given the author’s experience investigating police misconduct claims and bearing witness to plenty of horror stories. His protagonist has a similar profession, and in The Big Fear, he teams up with an officer previously on the wrong side of an excessive force inquiry as they uncover a vast and terrible conspiracy. Earning comparisons to Serpico, this book is about much more than a few bad apples—it’s about a system that enables corruption, brutality, and oppression.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue