Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: I was looking foward to reading this book. I'm interested in reading about the Police and Police Departments. This book just kept flipping from Police stories to growing up to examples of Police work that went into real stories with no warning then back a great grandfather and police work back then. Then to top it off who his mother married and her life. It bacame very boring reading. I would be reading thinking to my self "What is he talking about." I want to read about Police work and what it's like which the author does write about in between other meaningless information.
Rating:
Summary: Can anyone say over-written?
Review: One of the reviews on here hit it right on the head. Nothing much happens to this guy. As a result, he has to wax poetic on every detail of his life.
Police officers have a tough job. So do many others. I'm not sure that rates 500 pages of what is supposed to be soaring prose.
And a TERRIBlE idea to release this before the summer. This is the antithesis of a summer read!
He's getting by on his Harvard English degree. I didn't get through it all, sorry--ran out of interest.
Rating: 
Summary: A slow-moving, soporific summer read
Review: For a book about cops, I agree, this is a good book. But that is because the genre is riddled with mediocrity, and in the face if this low level of achievement, this book is "good." However, I am glad I read it while it was still cold out, because it's far from a thrilling summer read. If you like the idea of sitting on a beach, patio or lawn reading a slow-moving urban history of NYC interspersed with anecdotes from a cop who has never shot anyone, never cracked a big case, never fought for his life, was not at Ground Zero on 9/11 and spent his career in small-time drug enforcement, and claims to have been randomly shot at and missed by a wide margin while standing on a housing project rootop (while his account makes absolutely no sense) then by all means buy this book. However, if you want to read something really well-written for its own sake, then you can do much better. This is a great book for the sector of the population obsessed with the details of cop life.
Rating: 
Summary: The quintessential Cop Story - and I read 'em all!
Review: Everything about this book works - the writing is as good as it gets, and if cop stuff is your thing - you will love it! I am uniquely familiar with the inner workings of the NYPD, and everything is accurate and free of either embellishment or understatement. It's a history of the NYPD, NYC, and the authors family all in one go. Not the lightest read, definitely takes a little time - but I think in the genre it's gonna take some beating. Good work Mr. Conlon!
Rating:
Summary: Oh, the Stories He Tells!
Review: Ed Conlon is a Detective with the New York City police Department. His trials and tribulations within the Police Department are skillfully told in his book "Blue Blood". This is a book of truths, of his life before and after. His great grandfather was a New York City Policeman with a dubious reputation. His father worked for the NYPD and later for the FBI, and his uncle, Eddie was a New York City Cop. Ed Conlon loved his dad. He was a disciplinarian, but a loving father who wished the best for his son. Uncle Eddie was a hero to Ed and his father. Police work was in the blood of Ed's paternal family, and he joined that great fraternity.
It was not until Ed was a little older, after he graduated from Harvard, that Ed decided to join the police force. His time in the Police Academy, and his exploits as a new Police graduate are well documented. Throughout the book, Ed Conlon writes about the NYPD with pride and with a fresh face. These may be stories well known by other policemen, the same type of "things" that they may have gone through, but these experiences have not been as well written and documented as they are in "Blue Blood".Ed Conlon tells us about his time walking the beat in South Bronx to his job with the elite Narcotics squad. He shares his experiences on the street- how to talk to the people he works for, how to gain their trust and how to really do the job. He has many tales of life in narcotics- his informants and how they came to be. His tales are funny at times and sad and gritty many times. He becomes fond of his informants and his colleagues. Tales of how they coped with their professional lives that were often times filled with tragedy and horrid black holes. Ed Conlon shares the experiences of 9-11, the horror of that day and the aftermath. He was a newly promoted Detective, and he was in the office writing up a report when the first plane hit. His group of officers went to Ground Zero and worked the bucket brigade. They were then assigned to Fresh Kills Landfill, to go through the debris and look for bodies, black boxes and other evidence, whatever it was that was found. He had no famiy or close friends that were killed or injured, but he had plenty of useful stories and lots of memories. Ed had several uncles who had small resturants or shops in the Twin Towers- none of them were there that early in the day- they had all been saved. Ed Conlon finally had his Detective Promotion Ceremony. Because it was so close to 9-11 he was one of the few who smiled during the ceremony. Edward Conlon has two professions one as New York City Police Detective, and the other as a writer. It appears that he is very skilled at both. I loved this book, the writing is superb and kept me engrossed. For a first novel, Edward Conlon has written a book to be celebrated. prisrob
Rating: 
Summary: Blue Blood, Blue Wall, Blue Flu
Review: I am a NYPD Officer too and I have to say that this book is an up to date piece of work that anybody looking to get into the NYPD should read. -Because folks, this is where it's at. The boredom and the excitement. It's all here. The fact that Conlon is a Harvard graduate is here nor there. A lot of us have degrees. -It got him the right contract. Good for him and keep up the great work!
Rating:
Summary: Self-Conscious, Artful
Review: Despite some of the rather hysterical reviews for this book on here--both pro and con--I think there is an unmentioned problem that dogs the entire work: it feels contrived. The relentless drumbeat of "Harvard guy goes blue collar" that the publisher continues to beat (on the book jacket, no less) renders the entire thing, to me, somewhat suspect. I found myself constantly questioning events, observations, etc., because of the stagey quality of the narrative. One gets the image of the writer putting down his gun in the middle of a street situation in order to take notes for his ostensibly accurate "tell all." And there's something intellectually dishonest about that.
I'm sorry--I just couldn't trust this book. I think that's the real reason it often feels slow. It comes off more as some sort of writing exercise than a true memoir/discourse on big city policing.
Rating:
Summary: a book for the ages
Review: NYPD detective Edward Conlon's meditation on police work will live on long after everyone who is reading this review has expired. Perhaps comparisons to Augustine, Rousseau, and Merton are premature, but this story of a peripatetic soul on the journey to discover (and confirm) its calling is a book for the ages...and Conlon, unlike these worthies, has in his corner the intrinsic fascination of the police procedural... Some in this space have decried the book's length and its pace, but I will not fault Conlon for eschewing at times the brisk, snappish, connect-the-dots approach of a New Yorker article. Conlon (correctly) understands that such an approach in the long form yields trite, uninteresting work. Instead, we have here God's plenty. He also displays a gift for aphorism that boggles the mind. There are several phrases in this book ( I will not spoil the fun by revealing which ones) that I predict will survive as long as the English language. Be the first on your block to learn them. I say BRAVO.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Ed Conlon
Review: The most recent spate of customer reviews I think accurately protray my sentiments about this book. Where it not for the shameless and relentless hype about this book being a modern nonfiction "masterpiece," I think that many folks would have been more charitable toward Conlon. While not a rookie cop any longer, he is a rookie writer by definition, and it must be hard to live up to the expectations of a publishing company that has to make up for a $1,000,000 advance and does so by deluging the airwaves, press and other media with talk that this is the best cop book ever written, and by a (alright, already!) Harvard English major at that. Conlon joined the NYPD at the age of 30, yet he says it was his calling in life to be a cop. He relies too much on 9/11 to give heft to the book, but he was nowhere near Gound Zero but instead worked in a garbage dump for 12 hours a day, sifting the wreckage for human remains. These manipulations are the problems inherent in his having to make a book out of his own disjunctive and often commonplace career in policing. It is also why his magazine articles were so much better: they were concise and powerful. I think that history will not be as kind to this book as it could have been, and I blame Conlon's literary agent. He was thrust into a game of No-Limit Texas Hold-Em' publishing when he signed this book deal, and it informed every aspect of his project. The result is that the book is too long, suffers from a few contrivances, and lacks the drama and drive that would have come from a more modest endeavor. I don't care how many times other writers call this a fantastic cop book, it's all in the reading. As far as the poker goes, Owen Laster put him "all in," but he didn't have "the nuts." One parting note: If you are wondering how much is banking on the novelty of Colon's education, consider that the dust jacket not only mentions Harvard, but that he went to Regis High School, an exclusive private school in New York. How in the world is this relevant in any sense? Have you ever seen an author's high school on a dust jacket bio? The implications are that cops are generally less well-educated than you and I and the even going to Regis and being a cop is a novelty. No wonder many of the officers who review this book feel a little insulted.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not up to the hype!
Review: Conlon writes well, but not spectacularly. There are passages that resonate, but for the most part he could have told his story with fewer attempts at trying to impress us with his superior education. I have the feeling that Conlon considers himself superior to the average cop, and it shows, glaringly at times. His story is not above and beyond the grittier fare about life on the streets, merely a slightly different view. Where books like Serpico overdramatize real events, Conlon tries the reverse and presents a ho hum attitude. Let's face it, cops seldom get the respect they deserve, and that is unfortunate especially in the post 9/11 climate, but Conlon fails in his effort to raise our awarness by not providing any new insights or "factually accurate" heroic incidents. Half as long - less than 300 pages - would have been more dramatic, more relevant and just plain better. Less self praise and more about his fellow officers would have added greatly to the effort. Still, if you have the time, you could do worse than give this a try.
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