The New York Times Book Review - Jennifer Gonnerman
This is a world that most journalists never cover, and most of America never sees…In Ghettoside, [Leovy] tackles this "plague of murders," as she calls it, with a book-length narrative that enables her to write about it with all the context and complexity it deserves…Leovy's relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights—and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that "black lives matter," showing how the "system's failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap."
The New York Times - Dwight Garner
Jill Leovy's powerful new book…is old-school narrative journalism…a serious and kaleidoscopic achievement…Nestled inside the story of one gang-related killing is a well-made and timely argument…that transcends a single death. Ms. Leovy suggests, six decades after the start of the civil rights movement, that the "impunity for the murder of black men" remains America's great and largely ignored race problem…Like an orchestra, Ghettoside needs time to warm up…Yet once it gets rolling, it is tidal in its force…Ms. Leovy's greatest gift as a journalist [is] her ability to remain hard-headed while displaying an almost Tolstoyan level of human sympathy. Nearly every person in her story—killers and victims, hookers and soccer moms, good cops and bad—exists within a rich social context…[Leovy's] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.
Publishers Weekly - Audio
04/27/2015
Lowman brings her considerable talent for taking on male voices to the audio edition of acclaimed journalist Levoy’s examination of violent crime in urban America. Levoy’s narrative centers on the work of a core group of dedicated homicide detectives on the streets of South Los Angeles and their relationships with victims, suspects, and the wider community. Lowman shines in her portrayals of John Skaggs, a white officer who takes great pains to transcend his conservative suburban image, and Wally Tennelle, a black officer whose decision to live inside the neighborhood he polices comes into serious question when his own teenage son Bryant is shot to death. Lowman also brings her gift for characterization to the rendering of Jessica Midkiff, a young prostitute struggling to rehabilitate herself who happens to be the principal witness to the murder of Tennelle’s son. The palpable tension of a no-holds-barred interrogation comes to life in impressive detail, and Lowman never misses a beat. A Random/Spiegel & Grau hardcover. (Jan.)
Publishers Weekly
★ 09/15/2014
This absorbing first book from journalist Leovy traces the investigation and prosecution of a 2007 murder in South Los Angeles, registering along the way a powerful argument about race and our criminal justice system. Eighteen-year-old Bryant Tennelle was “just another black man down.” His shooting death inspired neither press attention nor vigorous police action—until, that is, his case was handed to Police Detective John Skaggs, the central figure in Leovy’s narrative. By following the relentless Skaggs, fleshing out all his quirks, and rendering the perpetrators, survivors, and witnesses of the murder vividly, Leovy spins a good yarn and illustrates how, by her lights, black-on-black homicide should be dealt with (but too seldom is). The state fails “to catch and punish even a bare majority of murderers” in urban black enclaves, and the result is “street justice”—informal legal systems, replete with their own laws and codes and punishments. Gang violence, in Leovy’s account, is thus not a cause of lawlessness; rather, it is “a whole system of interactions determined by the absence of law.” Like most ghettoside cases, the Tennelle case was eminently solvable—merely awaiting a determined investigator to whom the lives of black men were valuable, their murders something to be answered for. Readers may come for Leovy’s detective story; they will stay for her lucid social critique. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
A serious and kaleidoscopic achievement . . . [Jill Leovy is] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Masterful . . . gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.”—Los Angeles Times
“Moving and engrossing.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Penetrating and heartbreaking . . . Ghettoside points out how relatively little America has cared even as recently as the last decade about the value of young black men’s lives.”—USA Today
“Functions both as a snappy police procedural and—more significantly—as a searing indictment of legal neglect . . . Leovy’s powerful testimony demands respectful attention.”—The Boston Globe
“Ghettoside is fantastic. It does what the best narrative nonfiction does: It transcends its subject by taking one person’s journey and making it all our journeys. That’s what makes this not just a gritty, heart-wrenching, and telling book, but an important one. From the patrol cop to the president, everyone needs to read this book.”—Michael Connelly
“Ghettoside is remarkable: a deep anatomy of lawlessness.”—Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal
“[Leovy writes] with grace and artistry, and controlled—but bone-deep—outrage in her new book. . . . Ghettoside, if there’s any justice, will be the most important book about urban violence in a generation.”—David M. Kennedy, The Washington Post
“Riveting . . . This timely book could not be more important.”—Associated Press
“Told with the chilling detail and gripping pace of a prime-time drama.”—The Economist
“Leovy’s relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights—and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that ‘black lives matter.’ ”—The New York Times Book Review
“A compelling analysis of the factors behind the epidemic of black-on-black homicide, and the beginnings of a policy prescription for tackling it . . . an important book, which deserves a wide audience.”—Hari Kunzru, The Guardian
“Ghettoside has many successes: its complicated portrait of the LAPD, the humanity it lends to the families of murder victims, and its ability to engage readers from a historical and current-day context (the sundry facts Leovy provides throughout the book never overwhelm).”—Jason Parham, Gawker
“A brave book . . . It is not often that I pick up a work of non-fiction and picture the movie unfolding before my eyes. . . . [Ghettoside] offers a calm dissection of America’s oldest epidemic. . . . [Leovy’s] knowledge makes for lapidary prose that crackles with insight. It is also deeply humane.”—Financial Times
“First-rate stuff.”—Newsweek
Library Journal - Audio
★ 05/01/2015
In her first book, Los Angeles Times reporter Leovy paints a compelling picture of life in south Los Angeles, a locus of gang-related homicide. Her focus is on the murder of Bryant Tennelle, who was killed within a few blocks of his home, and the detective team assigned to solve the murder against steep odds. Although this is a work of nonfiction, Leovy's pace and style drive the story as relentlessly as the most additive detective novel. Rebecca Lowman does a superb reading: clear, engaging, and without distraction. VERDICT This is an important must-listen for true crime lovers. Additionally, most mystery and crime fiction lovers, especially those following Michael Connelly and other L.A.-based authors, will also appreciate it. ["An important book for anyone interested in crime in America. Academics and casual viewers of police procedurals alike will find this a worthwhile read": LJ 1/15 starred review of the Spiegel & Grau hc.]—Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA
Library Journal
★ 01/01/2015
Urban murders tend to be reported as lump sums, statistics with the descriptor "gang-related" attached. A homicide connected to a gang lets those watching the nightly news relax a little by assuming that the victim was involved in nefarious activities and is perhaps partly to blame for his death. Reporter Leovy started the Los Angeles Times' Homicide Report blog to combat the inattention paid to the victims from poor, predominantly African American neighborhoods in South Central L.A. Here, the author digs deeply into the story of one particular murder, exploring the long history of racism, discrimination, and poverty that created both the shockingly high murder rate for young black men and the indifferent response to those crimes. Like the best narrative nonfiction, the book burrows into both heart and brain, resulting in the reader reeling for the families left behind and more suspicious of news reports that paint slain teenagers as brutal career criminals. VERDICT An important book for anyone interested in crime in America. Academics and casual viewers of police procedurals alike will find this a worthwhile read. [See Prepub Alert, 7/28/14.]—Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT
MARCH 2016 - AudioFile
There may be no more tragic story in America than the prevalence of black-on-black violence and the public dismissal of it as unimportant. Narrator Rebecca Lowman takes a low-key approach, and it works perfectly; this audiobook is so dramatic and sad that it doesn’t need any amping up. Jill Leovy hangs her exploration of the South Central district of Los Angeles on the death of teenager Bryant Tennelle, the son of a police detective with no gang connections, and the efforts of Detective John Skaggs to solve that murder. Lowman convincingly renders the decency and drive of Skaggs, who is white and who lives in the area, has an unbelievable work ethic, and believes justice is the key to prevention. The litany of death is depressing, but there’s some comfort in learning that there are heroes on the side of angels. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2016 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2014-11-06
Los Angeles Times reporter and editor Leovy looks at the thinly veiled racist origins of violence in South Central LA.In her debut, the author journeys where most fear to tread: the perennially mean streets of South Central LA, where she uses the senseless murder of a policeman's progeny as a jumping-off point to investigate broader issues of why, even as violent crime as a whole in America continues to drop, that urban area sees so many of its people dying by tragically violent means. Leovy's big-picture thesis is that whether you're talking about the "rough justice" of vigilante revenge killings in Ghana, Northern Ireland or South Central LA, the one underlying cause is the same: a vacuum left by a legal system that fails to serve everyone equally. Leovy posits that the gang violence in LA is the result of the local police simply not doing their jobs. On a microcosmic level, the author follows the lives of two LAPD officers, John Skaggs and Wally Tennelle, the former investigating the murder of the latter's son. Tennelle's decision to buck the trend among LA cops and live within the city limits furthered his career as a police officer but had deadly consequences for his son. Intertwined with Leovy's swiftly paced true-crime narrative involving Skaggs' methodical tracking down of Tennelle's killer is some probing sociological research into how blacks in LA got the short end of the socioeconomic straw: Hispanics may have been treated unfairly in the jobs they worked, but as Leovy points out, African-Americans were, even as far back as the 1920s, often excluded from even the lowest-skilled jobs in the city. Unfortunately, however deftly the author interweaves the more personal angle of officers Skaggs and Tennelle with broader sociological "root cause" investigations, there is little to suggest that real change will arrive soon in South Central LA. A sobering and informative look at the realities of criminality in the inner city.
