The New York Times Book Review - Jill Leovy
One senses at points that Green wants to reach for novelistic flourishes, but he's restrained by better impulses…Rather than try to compensate for the material he's missing, he bets on plain language and diligent documentation, and allows his sources' unfiltered remembrances to take center stage. The result is as straightforward an account of the sordid tedium of gang life as exists anywhere…Green captures a level of detail that marks this work as exceptionally authentic…He faithfully follows the thread of innumerable petty dramas that punctuate gang life, and highlights the strange centrality of envy, something many observers miss…For outsiders tempted to believe the solutions to criminal justice challenges are simple or obvious, this book is a corrective. It shows that, wherever impunity and lucrative black markets overlap, violence is useful and easy. Ordinary kids may become remorseless killers who shoot at cops and view second chances as a license to do more harm.
Star Tribune - Rochelle Olson
"Green’s account reads true."
Michael Capuzzo
"A riveting, deeply human true-life thriller of deadly New York crack gangs that also breaks fresh ground on one of the most important issues of our time, the murders of young black men. With years of extraordinary reporter's access, crisp, cinematic writing, and no small amount of courage, Jonathan Green is the South Bronx Boswell of ruthless killers in a tale reminiscent of Gay Talese's classic inside portrait of the Bonanno crime family, Honor Thy Father. Most remarkably Green captures the common humanity of gangsters, cops, prosecutors, the guilty and the innocent, victims and avengers, redeemed and irredeemable psychopaths, the living and the dead in the modern noir American city."
ESPN - Ryen Russillo
"This book is incredible."
The Mail on Sunday
"Gripping.… This is a fascinating, albeit dispiriting read, a searing portrait of the appalling inequalities of the American Dream gone sour, a three-act tragedy played out against a soundtrack of gangsta rap."
Sam Quinones
"Sex Money Murder is a ferocious and long-overdue piece of true storytelling about a time and a place that saw the worst of the dope business. Within it are remarkable tales of faith in a standard, friendship or what passes for it, greed, decay, the worst and the best of America."
Booklist
"Doesn’t pull any punches….Green’s portraits of the good guys and the bad guys are richly layered and compelling: this is no simple cops-and-robbers story. It’s a story about an entire way of life and the way people on both sides of the law have been affected by it. A fine piece of crime nonfiction."
LitHub CrimeReads - Lisa Levy
"Expertly reported and written in a crisp, no nonsense style, Sex Money Murder is a glimpse into a violent criminal lifestyle rarely documented."
Kirkus Reviews
2018-02-20
The bloody history of a violent Bronx-based gang in the middle of the crack epidemic.Journalist Green (Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet, 2010) initially focuses on the Bronx during the 1980s and '90s, digging deep to explain how it became infested with gang-related shootings and a massive wave of deadly drug abuse. The author then moves the narrative into the present, explaining why crime has returned to the Bronx in full force after a temporary reduction. Although the saga is populated by a variety of vivid characters, Green emphasizes the importance of winning the trust of two veteran New York City policemen, John O'Malley and Pete Forcelli, and two lifelong Bronx-based criminals with experience inside the gang known as Sex Money Murder. Though the African-American gangsters, Pipe and Suge, felt no reason to trust Green, a white man with a British accent, they reluctantly met with him at the behest of O'Malley and Forcelli, who had helped bring them to justice and then encouraged them to leave their lives of crime. (Pipe mostly succeeded in becoming a law-abiding citizen, while Suge mostly failed.) The author realized the difficulties inherent in verifying much of what he heard from the gang members, and he labored mightily for confirmation by checking court records, police reports, and photographs as well as by interviewing prosecutors and defense lawyers. The bloodiness of the SMM-related crimes, as well as the lack of contrition from Suge, Pipe, and their cohorts, may turn off some readers, but Green's insights into a culture unavailable to most readers are invaluable. As the author writes, "just north of my Manhattan apartment was a world as dangerous as any I had experienced as a journalist reporting in the favelas of Brazil, the garrisons of Kingston, Jamaica, or the killing fields of Colombia."A disturbing yet necessary, significant book by a journalist willing to place himself in danger.
