Shaun's Reviews > Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

So in the minority on this one. (Should note, I finally abandoned at about page 170 to pursue other reading material.)

Unfortunately, I did not like Leovy's style of story telling. She took way too long to get into the main story and much of the initial 100 pages is repetitive. I found the biographical chapters of the various detectives involved to be trite and overly scripted.

The underlying premise, that in various black communities, an ineffective policing leads to a vigilante style of justice, is interesting. This idea that black lives don't matter is a topic that I think deserves time and attention. I just wasn't feeling it in this book. I read a lot of true crime and true crime within the context of a bigger story, and this didn't measure up to my expectations. I think part of the problem is the author starts by telling us how the police and society have marginalized black men in particular, yet she then spends the first third of the book describing these great detectives who go above and beyond the call of duty to protect black men. There was a disconnect for me. I also found it odd that she went out of our way to tell us what a good boy the victim was. Black, white, good, or bad. Should we be less concerned with his murder if he were a gang member? Isn't that part of the problem? Making value judgements about someone's worth based on some personal/cultural litmus?

Anyway, Just Mercy covers a similar topic, but somehow manages to succeed where this book fails. I don't know. It just seemed to me as if Leovy was too detached from the story itself and also from the plight of the people she is writing about. Given her credentials, this is surprising, but the way I felt.

Again, in the minority here, so if you enjoy reading about social inequality, this book may well be worth your time.