Rating: 
Summary: Expected More...I think....
Review: Blue Blood is a police memoir written by a cop who is a Harvard graduate. Ok...have we said that for the thousanth time? good. I am also a NYC Police Officer, so here is my review from that perspective... This book says nothing that has not been already been said by countless other "less educated" cops turned authors. Conlons Harvard degree not withstanding, the book falls into the same trap that most other police-written books do, non-intentional self aggrandizement and the implication that the author is more suited to "tell it like it is" than any other cop on the job. Conlon may disagree, but I found that the book had a condescending feel, in that Conlons perceived self-importance, however well hidden most of the time, couldn't help but show itself. What we expected was a book about the NYPD,it's good and bad aspects, albeit one written from within Conlons worldview. Instead of the former, what we got was another hero detective story complete with all the informants, domestic disputes, and colloquialisms, gritty yes, but without any real criticism of the NYPD or police work in general. Blue Blood has more literary references and assimilations than most other non-fiction cop stories, an aspect that will make it more palatable (and purchaseable) for the lower Manhattan literatary crowd, however for the people who really want to hear their story told, the officers and their families, it does not do that, at least not without making us feel less impportant than the author. For those of you not well versed in the criminal justice / law enforcement world, Conlon's career, while exemplary, is far from uncommon. So he made a few collars, got into a specialized unit, made Detective, great, it happens all the time. As for realism, outside of what a previous reviewer called a "Damon Runyonesque" description of street patrol, I dare question some of the stories legitimacy, an example, the "gun raid" search warrant that a rookie cop Conlon initiated (I am not the first reviewer to mention this passage, so I assume there is some relevant criticism there). First off, let me say that it is entirely possible that an assertive, astute rookie cop could initiate, and obtain, with proper supervision, a search warrant for an apartment purported to contain numerous firearms. What sounds unlikely to me, and I am not saying this didn't happen...that the same rookie cop would be on the ititial entry team for such a location, especially when the search warrant stated the possibilty of "numerous semi-automatic weapons and two fully automatic weapons" being in the apartment. A high risk warrant such as this is almost always conducted by the NYPD's tactical team, the ESU. A commanding officer who allows such an operation as depicted to occur within his purvue is risking liabilty. So, I infer, was there some embellishment of the young Conlons involvement there? possibly. Was there similar embellishment through the rest of the book? who knows? In summary, not every cop can write as well as Conlon, (including me) however, as for the subject matter, for a million bucks, I could sure tell you some stories myself...
Rating: 
Summary: Okay so far
Review: Not all the way through it. Not sure if I'll finish it.
Rating:
Summary: DULL!
Review: I'd heard about this book when the author got a big advance. It is exactly what you'd expect. Some lurid police details, but the thing doesn't MOVE. I ended up skimming parts after awhile. The central conceit is that this guy can write, yet is still a cop. While he has some nice descriptive passages, it is too clearly a "cop diary" dressed up as work of genuine nonfiction. Comes off as a gimmick. I can't recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Gritty, Thought-Provoking Urban Adventure
Review: Conlon offers a no-holds-barred, intimate look inside the world of a NYC beat cop. Does he revolutionize this well-trod genre? No, but he offers an up-to-date, literate, contextual portrait of life in New York's fringier neighborhoods, and the enthusiasm for confrontation is all part of the macho job attraction. Perhaps a little self-consciously adaptable for Hollywood, but so is every modern tell-all. My other favorite memoir is "I Sleep At Red Lights: A True Story of Life After Triplets," by Bruce Stockler. Much different subject matter, but also riveting and honest (and funny).
Rating: 
Summary: just say no
Review: I heard the author on the Jim Bonhanan show and was in complete disbelief as he stonily talked about what a high it was to kick in people's doors and stalk the streets of the South Bronx as a true blue kick-ass. Sure enough there it is, the author, a beneficary of affirmative action at Harvard, buys his upperclass patrons' sweet words and really does believe he has a great story to share for the citizens of the world. Or that he's special because he's a cop and actually knows how to spell. Guess what? It's yet another tired Damon Runyesque-cop-fantasy about walking the mean streets y'hear, what with all the brown dregs out there, being a blue-collar hero so misunderstood (except by the white upperclasses who keep their arms' length while handing out big book deals for a guy so willing to do their questionable bidding). It's tired and boring. Despite the Harvard degree which is apparantly the selling point for this overlong treatise, I found this book dull and depressing.
Rating:
Summary: walk on the beat with a NYPD detective
Review: If you've ever wondered what it like, what it's really like to be a cop- this is the book for you. Forget NYPD blue this read is more humorous and true.
Mister Conlon lets us in on the everyday trials and tribulations of "the job" with all it's humanity, humor, ups and downs, victories and disappointments. You'll look at the men in blue in a whole new light in fact in the words of Holden Caufield when he says wouldn't it be great if after you finished a book you could call the author up and take him for a cup of coffee and talk to him? Conlon leaves you feeling like you just left the cafe with a slap on the back and you've found out how all your buddies are down at the station and what that jerk did last night.
Rating:
Summary: Why are people so bitter?
Review: As I read some of the reviews on this page I am struck by a few things that resonate through the negative ones:
BITTERNESS that Ed Conlon got paid a decent advance. Probably wouldn't have if a lot of other publishers didn't also think he had potential to write a great book. Guess what? He did.
SELF-LOATHING that maybe Ed Conlan got a better education than they did. From the looks of it he earned it and didn't get it handed to him like a lot of people, including our president.
STUPIDITY to think that there is anything wrong with getting any notice for this book that is possible. Its a great book and deserves it! What publicist in their right mind wouldn't mention that the guy was educated at Harvard? How many cops are? It's hard to get a book noticed in a country that gets its culture from Fox News. If you're fighting The Apprentice for hearts and minds you better pull out all the stops.
I have to think that there are reasons for the vindictiveness. Never got their book published? Did get it published and only sold ten copies to their families? What gives?Well here's what I think: This is a great book! Deep and interesting. The reader goes through everything a policeman goes through, at least a policeman named Ed Conlan, for better AND worse. The drudgery as well as the excitiment comes through in this great book! Policework isn't what we see on TV, but I would have to believe it is what I read here. Thank God we have people like the good cops in this book watching over us!
Rating: 
Summary: Blue Blood
Review: This is a down and dirty look into the cop on the beat and his move up the ladder to detective. It tells how it really is to work on the NYPD and goes into all the trouble the NYPD had with corruption. The book takes you into what it was like to work the scene of the 9/11 event and more details than you may want to know. All in all its a good book and I believe a true account of police work in the NYPD told by one of the men that should know, he was there. - A good read-Larry Hobson- Author-"The Day Of The Rose"
Rating:
Summary: A victim of high expectations
Review: Make no mistake, the underlying crux of Conlon's endeavor is that he has an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard College and chose to do something as "blue collar" and "salt-of-the-Earth" as joing the NYC Housing Police in 1995, at the age of 30. That he had a successful string of New Yorker articles from 1997 to 2000 speaks as much to the upper-classes' fascination with the lives of average folks and the inherent novelty of a Harvard-trained street cop as it does about his ability to write, which is ostensibly much better than that of most police officers'. A million-dollar book deal set the bar almost "unreachably high" for Conlon, who was tasked with turning his honorable but inevitably commonplace--at least as far as big-city policing is concerned--career of low-level narcotics enforcement into a book-length "epic." What he produced is a testament to these high expectations. Several years behind schedule, the finished book could only achieve its requisite length and narrative consistency by invoking worlds and worlds of information that comes from the oft-trodden ground of NYPD history: Serpico, the tumultous 1970's NYC, the fight that the urban poor engage in on a daily basis to retain their dignity, etc. This is all delivered while necessarily sacrificing the dramatic tension that is evoked by the highest class of nonfiction writing: the drama that makes you feel like you were there, and the feelings in Conlon's guts are the feelings in your own. We are told a lot of things by Conlon in this book, but it is unclear that we are made to feel them. A brief caution to readers who are considering buying this book after reading the highly favorable review of it in the NYT Book Review: the reviewer, Ted Conover, is another well-educated author qua uniformed civil servant. Three years ago, he wrote a book on being a corrections officer after spending two years working in New York's Sing Sing facility. Notwithstanding wondering if two years was long enough to figure out what you don't know in that type of job let alone what you have learned, it stands to reason that the success of Conlon's book is directly related to the success of the genre, and moreover to Conover's continuing sales. It seems a bit biased that Conover was even allowed to review a book about a writer who works in a uniformed service while taking notes so he can tell the public "what it's really like," especially when Conover's own book uses the same M.O. (no pun intended, of course) and is still relatively recent. All this said, Blue Blood will take its place among the better works on policing. However, this was never a genre of masters to begin with, and it is even a slight insult all around to say that Conlon is a good writer, "for a cop." It would be very hasty to compare him to the true nonfiction giants of our time. Instead, this is a good book for the unacquainted who would like to be voyeurs into the world of policing.
Rating:
Summary: double yawn
Review: i went back and reread parts to make sure, yes, whoever said it's weak egomaniacs who are attracted to life as a NYC PO would be proven right with 'blue blood.' colon raves about how much he loves to break and enter and to arrest and violate the privacy of the poor immigrants of the south bronx. if you're attracted to the borderline sociopath desperate to flex his muscles and brag about the most empty of matters, this is the book for you. it's a long, long, long conversation with a guy who aint too bright and oblivious to the fact that he's not as interesting as he thinks. not really his fault i guess.
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