The Force by Don Winslow

This book was interesting, sobering and saddening.   Denny started off his career wanting to make a difference.  He discovered that being a cop wasn’t quite what he had expected.   The streets were hard and the salary was meager.  

The author paints a sad picture of the NYC police department.   I am fortunate to have friends and family who are also cops and frankly I have not seen what the author portrays.   However with that said, I am in the burbs and life here is substantially different than in the urban environment.  Corruption is a slippery slope which impacts not only the mores but the soul.   Baby steps don’t have to lead to wholesale corruption but they may.  Having owned a convenience store for 10 years I had a lot of contact with the local police force.  Occasionally I could get one of the guys to take a cup of coffee after I insisted that I was giving it  to a friend not to a cop. The local chief was very strict about conduct. 

This book paints a very different picture with advancement  based on the who you know policy rather than the what have you accomplished policy.   Rabbi’s or mentors who help guys get ahead are fine but if they are teaching them corruption then the system is flawed.

This was hard to read as my personal experience with cops has been so different.  It smacks of reality in the need for retribution particularly when boundaries of sanity are crossed as in the murder of children.

This may be just a novel but I took it as social commentary.

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.