Blue Blood

A gripping insider account of life in the NYPD - perfect for fans of The Wire

A high watermark of realism and insider knowledge ... Read this outstanding book

A dazzling epic of street life ... vibrant and hilarious. Conlon is a cop's cop

Superb. The most stunning memoir ever written about the cop world

Beautiful and inspiring, terrifying and heartbreaking

More chilling than even the most realistic cop dramas on TV

A great book ... with the testimonial force equal to that of Michael Herr's Dispatches

Edward Conlon is a detective with the New York City Police Department. A graduate of Regis High School in New York and of Harvard, he has published articles in The New Yorker and he lives and works in the Bronx.

'Superb. The most stunning memoir ever written about the cop world' 
Joseph Wambaugh 
 
'Beautiful and inspiring, terrifying and heartbreaking' 
James Frey 
 
'More chilling than even the most realistic cop dramas on TV' 
People 
 
'A great book...with the testimonial force equal to that of Michael Herr's Dispatches' Time 
 
Blue Blood is the fast-paced, insider story of Edward Conlon's career in the New York Police Department. Conlon tells of his first days as a rookie, walking a beat in the south Bronx through his time in narcotics and his ascent to gold shield detective. Conlon is the product of generations involved in law enforcement, good cops and bad, and he paints a vivid portrait of the teeming street life of the city, in all its horror and splendour. It's all here: adrenaline-fuelled chases, toxic police politics, crackhead informants and police camaraderie. The pace is relentless, the stories hypnotic, the scope nothing less than monumental.

Edward Conlon

Lives Less Ordinary

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
NYPD cop, Ed Conlon is quite simply the most stunningly authentic voice to ever tell what it is really like out there on the mean streets pursuing crime. His writing has been hailed as masterful and epic, and here he lets us know what is involved in the endless fight against the drug dealers. From grooming crackhead informants to adrenaline-fuelled chases, this is the true story of a New York drugs cop. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Edward Conlon's stunning book Blue Blood.

Edward Conlon

Books by Edward Conlon

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter