75 Books Like New York's Finest

Thematically, my book explores the evolution of the FBI during its most transformative decades. This exceptional work takes us deeper into one area where the FBI can bring to bear remarkable capabilities unlike any other agency: the introduction of Criminal Profiling. 

Douglas delivers a rare insider’s account as one of the FBI’s original profilers in ways that are as informative as they are provocative, all within the harrowing high-stakes context of pursuing some of the most heinous and ultra-violent criminals imaginable. 

Douglas wisely balances this complex, historical, technique-driven accounting with narrative portrayals rife with real consequences that this select group of trailblazing investigators absorbed due to such intimate immersion pursuing these worst-of-the-worst criminal minds. The sheer emotional weight and toll on them are stunning, heightening the sense of debt we as a society owe to them for their invaluable service. 

These sacrifices underscore the reality that protecting and serving for… show more.

David Simon’s Homicide stands as one of the most honest and most vivid looks at police work ever put on paper.

Simon drags us into this violent and chaotic world as few could, based on a year he spent alongside detectives in the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit. This insider access produces an immersive experience that unfolds in dramatic fashion.

What absolutely leaps off the page is the weight of the implications of such violent crimes and what it demands of the detectives investigating. These are men and women gripped in a desperate vice, toiling relentlessly in the darkest corners of the city, absorbing grief, frustration, and exhaustion while trying to bring answers to families who are desperate for them.

Simon doesn’t overdramatize the work. He doesn’t need to. He brings us inside the grind: sleepless nights, leads that don’t pan out, political machinations, and the quiet toll the constant… show more.

Even if Retired NYPD Detective Thomas Dades didn’t introduce me to my co-author Anthony Nelson, I’d still highly recommend this gripping, behind-the-scenes account of one of the most shocking and consequential corruption investigations in NYPD history. 

This work dives into the day-to-day work of putting together a case against two of the most corrupt police officers in New York City history: Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, a.k.a. the “Mafia Cops.” 

It is the compelling story you can’t help but marvel at the investigative tenacity, political crosswinds navigated by prosecutors and investigators, personal costs and professional risks, and the sheer amount of time and effort needed to deliver justice. 

Friends of the Family is different from many law enforcement books in that Dades and Vecchione are so honest and open about their investigative odyssey, and along for the ride, the reader begins to appreciate the humanity of these good cops and… show more.

In my book, a teenage Anthony Nelson is inspired to pursue a career at the FBI by an advertisement presenting the bureau as the hardest job imaginable. Heather Mac Donald offers up a powerful, data-driven examination that dramatically underscores this premise. 

Drawing on meticulous research, dogged field reporting, and interviews with an amazing cross-section of officers across the country, Mac Donald dispels myths as she reveals context and far-too-often-unseen challenges police confront daily. 

Today’s members of law enforcement face dramatic rises in violence, harsh public scrutiny, and undulating politically driven pressures, coupled with severe emotional and physical demands.

Unfortunately, there is a steady undertone of the public maligning of law enforcement evident today that Mac Donald plumbs in depth. What Mac Donald does is inject into this conversation undeniable data and dramatic details to bridge that wide delta between on-the-ground realities and public misperceptions, which ultimately assault the psyche of… show more.

Maple was the architect of the tactics that allowed the NYPD to lower homicides by 60% in two miraculous years from 1990–1992. This book is easy to read and often funny, which doesn’t obscure Maple’s tactical genius. The story of how a lowly transit cop who fancied suits, vests, bow ties, and homburgs became Assistant Commissioner of Police in New York is astonishing. You can only regret that Maple was never able to use his fake “Gun-Sniffing Dog” ploy to flush suspects with concealed firearms. It was sheer genius.

Kathy Mallory is a character unlike any other. Kathy was a child of the streets who had the good fortune of being adopted into the loving home of a police officer who saw her brilliance and resourcefulness even at a young age. Years later, Kathy has become an NYPD officer who brings justice to victims through her own sense of right and wrong. She is a street-hardened, lone wolf who doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants. I love the complexity of this tough-as-nails female officer who bends all the rules in her pursuit of justice. This book is so well written I immediately read every book I could find by this author.

I often fall asleep while reading in bed but this book kept me wide awake long past my bedtime. I found the mystery unnerving. It reminded me of one of those apparently unsolvable riddles, or some diabolical magician’s act.

The suspense grew relentlessly and more and more frightening at an accelerated pace, forcing me to keep clenching the book until the unexpected climax tying all loose ends.

Only when I arrived in Paris did I discover the works of this major African American writer.

Back then, Himes—still under-recognized in the USA—was a long-time household name in France. Himes not only brought the American crime novel to the Black part of town, he did it with a satiric bite that is his distinguishing feature.

The Black police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are at the center of the nine novels in Himes's Harlem Cycle, an epic achievement in crime fiction.

Himes's Harlem is a violent phantasmagoria where Digger and Ed—in order to protect the poor, ordinary working folk of the community—are forced to be the baddest of the bad.

Cotton Comes to Harlem is my favorite work in the collection. Published in 1965, it skewers both Black militants and white racists with wicked glee.

Written in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! was the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green—it’s one of those great books that (like The Exorcist) was totally overshadowed by its equally great film version. It’s set in 1999, in a grossly overpopulated and polluted world in which people are scrambling for ever-diminishing resources. It mainly follows the life of NYC detective Andy Rusch and his elderly roommate Sol—who has finagled a bicycle-powered generator to run the TV and refrigerator in their small apartment. Rusch falls in love with Shirl, the young mistress of a rich man whose murder Rusch is investigating, but Shirl dumps him when she realizes she has better options with the rich rather than the poor.

Make Room! Make Room! is a cautionary tale about unchecked population, and it’s driven not so much by plot as by what Harry Harrison had on his mind: pollution,… show more.

Richard Price’s propulsive plots revolve around crime, but the novels are always about something much bigger, and Lush Life merges many of his favorite themes into one masterpiece: ambition and compromise, race and class, gentrification and crime, the push-and-pull of a city’s progressive leanings against reactionary forces for law and order and property values. Price’s city is constructed on a bedrock of conflict between those who’ve come to New York struggling to create art, those who were born here struggling to get by, and the cops struggling to hold the middle, in a spectacular kaleidoscope of a downtown scene at the turn of the millennium, of hipsters and gangsters, housing projects and trendy restaurants, all these subcultures clashing in one microcosm of urban life.