I picked up Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood in the first few days after becoming interested in law enforcement as a career. I was interested in picking up anything related to police work that looked good, and to do so I went straight for the local Barnes & Noble to see what they had lying around. In addition to seeing Dennis Smith’s book Report from Engine Co. 82 on the shelf in its third edition (which made me very happy), Blue Blood stood out from the rest and made me pull it from the shelf.
Blue Blood is the memoirs of Edward Conlon, a New York City street cop in the late 90s and early 21st Century. One of the reasons the book appealed to me off the bat was because that’s what I really want to be. Conlon goes on at length about his family history and about his experience with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in NYC. He sticks devotedly to narrative, refraining from giving much analysis or insight of his own into police work as a whole. The story of Conlon’s early career captures the essence of the devoted rookie police officer tackling crime in one of the seediest districts in the United States – New York City’s South Bronx.
The book itself is excellently written and is overall a great read. I was expecting the work to be more focused on police work than it actually was. I was also looking for some more analysis, but Conlon lets you make your own judgments about what happens in the book. Conlon’s early career perfecly captures life as a young police officer, with the hyper-devotion to the job, the deterioration of the personal life off the job, the camaraderie with the squad, and the oppression of superiors. Since I was looking for material specifically dealing with law enforcement, I sometimes found myself skipping through the chapters about Conlon’s childhood and ancestors. There are however plenty of war stories and detailed descriptions of the ups and downs of the job for the reader to enjoy.
Due to the fact that I read the book before I knew much if anything about what being a police officer is like or what it means, I found myself looking back at it later and re-assessing some of what Conlon describes – especially after reading Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement by Gilmartin, which will be my next review. In summary, Blue Blood makes a great addition to the discerning police recruit’s (and, I assume, officer’s) library.
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