Two Baltimore journalists reveal the nearly unbelievable tales of widespread police corruption in a squad whose leader ran it “like a war machine.”
Woods and Soderberg meticulously reveal a group within the Baltimore Police Department that became a criminal enterprise all its own. Known as the Gun Trace Task Force, its mission revolved around confiscating illegal weapons and narcotics and arresting the perpetrators. The authors begin with the egregiously corrupt head of GTTF, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, who operated with near immunity. “For years,” write the authors, “high-ranking allies covered for Jenkins, helping him escape scrutiny coming from what they considered minor infractions.” However, as they demonstrate, most of Jenkins’ infractions were hardly minor, and in 2017, he was “indicted on federal racketeering charges.” The members of GTTF revolved in and out according to who applied and who was approved by either Jenkins or his superiors. Though the authors focus primarily on Jenkins and the eight other GTTF members, they also weave in secondary characters (the cast of characters at the beginning is useful), including a former BPD officer who moved to the force in Philadelphia, drug dealers who served as “collaborators,” families who were robbed and or terrorized by GTTF members, federal prosecutors, a Baltimore prosecutor, and defense lawyers. Dozens of other characters populate the narrative, too, sometimes in circumstances that might cause readers to question their utility. A few of the major characters emerge as the heroes within this massive scandal. Foremost is Ivan Bates, a defense lawyer who represented some of the victims of GTTF and was determined to bring down Jenkins and his thugs. Though racial bias is not an overriding theme of the text, it is nonetheless always in the background. Eventually, justice was served, at least in the form of lengthy jail sentences, but certain wounds will never heal.
Few readers will close this page-turner doubting that the GTTF was anything but the most corrupt police group in the U.S. (16-page color photo insert)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-22180-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Sedaris remains stubbornly irreverent even in the face of pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval.
In his previous collection of original essays, Calypso (2018), the author was unusually downbeat, fixated on aging and the deaths of his mother and sister. There’s bad news in this book, too—most notably, the death of his problematic and seemingly indestructible father at 96—but Sedaris generally carries himself more lightly. On a trip to a gun range, he’s puzzled by boxer shorts with a holster feature, which he wishes were called “gunderpants.” He plays along with nursing-home staffers who, hearing a funnyman named David is on the premises, think he’s Dave Chappelle. He’s bemused by his sister Amy’s landing a new apartment to escape her territorial pet rabbit. On tour, he collects sheaves of off-color jokes and tales of sexual self-gratification gone wrong. His relationship with his partner, Hugh, remains contentious, but it’s mellowing. (“After thirty years, sleeping is the new having sex.”) Even more serious stuff rolls off him. Of Covid-19, he writes that “more than eight hundred thousand people have died to date, and I didn’t get to choose a one of them.” The author’s support of Black Lives Matter is tempered by his interest in the earnest conscientiousness of organizers ensuring everyone is fed and hydrated. (He refers to one such person as a “snacktivist.”) Such impolitic material, though, puts serious essays in sharper, more powerful relief. He recalls fending off the flirtations of a 12-year-old boy in France, frustrated by the language barrier and other factors that kept him from supporting a young gay man. His father’s death unlocks a crushing piece about dad’s inappropriate, sexualizing treatment of his children. For years—chronicled in many books—Sedaris labored to elude his father’s criticism. Even in death, though, it proves hard to escape or laugh off.
A sweet-and-sour set of pieces on loss, absurdity, and places they intersect.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-39245-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Did you like this book?
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
12
GET IT
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
