Showing results by author "Jill Leovy" in All Categories

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of Black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

Why would you kill your neighbour? Based on the best part of a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, this groundbreaking work of reportage takes us onto the streets, inside the homes, and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic. Through the gripping story of one particular murder of an 18-year-old boy named Bryant Tennelle, gunned down one evening in spring for no apparent reason, and of its investigation by a brilliant, ferociously driven detective.