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a detailed man
A relentless tour of DCs most crime-ridden streets, with many beautifully written surprises, and darker than the deepest noir. ~Madison Smartt Bell
"While it's difficult to find a retired cop who hasn't written a book, it's rare to find one as beautifully written as "A Detailed Man." "
Tim Grobaty, the Press Telegram of Long Beach
"From corner boys to call girls, Swinson sketches his characters with the authority of a seasoned detective who knows every alley in town."
Dave Jamieson, award winning journalist and author of, Mint Condition (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010)
David Swinson’s Ezra Simeon has the dry wit of Chandler’s Marlowe and the stylish, hard-won bitterness of Connelly’s Harry Bosch. ~Hillary Louise Johnson Half of DC Police Detective Ezra Simeon’s face is immobilized from a persistent case of Bell’s Palsy—he must drink through a straw and eat carefully to avoid chewing through his own cheek. He has been detailed from robbery to the cold case department while he heals. “How odd to dream with one eye open, like having one foot in reality,” Sim muses in the dark, bluesy vein that is typical of his Chandler-esque narration. “That’s what makes dreaming dangerous and why I moved my gun farther from the bed.” Detective Simeon’s half-frozen world begins to heat up when a friend from his Academy days drops dead of a heart attack, and Sim is tapped to replace him, detailed now to homicide, where he inherits the high-profile case of a murdered escort he alone thinks may be the victim of a serial killer.
"While it's difficult to find a retired cop who hasn't written a book, it's rare to find one as beautifully written as "A Detailed Man." "
Tim Grobaty, the Press Telegram of Long Beach
"From corner boys to call girls, Swinson sketches his characters with the authority of a seasoned detective who knows every alley in town."
Dave Jamieson, award winning journalist and author of, Mint Condition (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010)
David Swinson’s Ezra Simeon has the dry wit of Chandler’s Marlowe and the stylish, hard-won bitterness of Connelly’s Harry Bosch. ~Hillary Louise Johnson Half of DC Police Detective Ezra Simeon’s face is immobilized from a persistent case of Bell’s Palsy—he must drink through a straw and eat carefully to avoid chewing through his own cheek. He has been detailed from robbery to the cold case department while he heals. “How odd to dream with one eye open, like having one foot in reality,” Sim muses in the dark, bluesy vein that is typical of his Chandler-esque narration. “That’s what makes dreaming dangerous and why I moved my gun farther from the bed.” Detective Simeon’s half-frozen world begins to heat up when a friend from his Academy days drops dead of a heart attack, and Sim is tapped to replace him, detailed now to homicide, where he inherits the high-profile case of a murdered escort he alone thinks may be the victim of a serial killer.
344 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2011
53 people are currently reading
292 people want to read
About the author
David Swinson
17 books340 followersDavid Swinson is the author of THE SECOND GIRL, CRIME SONG, TRIGGER and City on the Edge, by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown& Co. He is a retired DC police detective, and a former alternative and punk rock promoter in Long Beach, CA in the eighties.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
November 20, 2014
A DETAILED MAN by David Swinson is a procedural about a cop afflicted with Bell's palsy. An amazingly good read, with some of the best and most authentic interrogation scenes I've read. Like Michael Connelly or Joseph Wambaugh, but with more heart. Highly recommended.
June 26, 2015
I do not know how I learned of the existence of this book, but I am glad I found it!
There are many crime novels out there that are great reads. There is something about A Detailed Man that, to me, placed it above most of the others I have read to date.
It takes place in the DC area, so that is appealing to me. The main detective is Ezra Simeon. When we meet him, we learn that his face is compromised on one side due to Bell's Palsy. He has to wear a patch over one eye to sleep, as it won't close. He drinks from a straw, and still has difficulty keeping food and drink from dribbling down into his beard. While he heals, he has been sent from robbery to cold case.
He finds positive reasons to stay in cold case until he can retire, and he has a good success rate, as he did in robbery. He finds one case that follows him when he is suddenly transferred again after the death of a friend in homicide. He inherits a high profile case of a murdered escort and realizes there are commonalities between that case and the cold case he was working on.
Swinson does a fantastic job of making a reader feel as if this is actually what police work is about. It is not glamorous, cases are not cracked within the time frame of a made-for-TV movie, and the characters are fleshed out.
I was surprised to learn that A Detailed Man is Swinson's first novel.
It definitely rates five stars in my book list!
There are many crime novels out there that are great reads. There is something about A Detailed Man that, to me, placed it above most of the others I have read to date.
It takes place in the DC area, so that is appealing to me. The main detective is Ezra Simeon. When we meet him, we learn that his face is compromised on one side due to Bell's Palsy. He has to wear a patch over one eye to sleep, as it won't close. He drinks from a straw, and still has difficulty keeping food and drink from dribbling down into his beard. While he heals, he has been sent from robbery to cold case.
He finds positive reasons to stay in cold case until he can retire, and he has a good success rate, as he did in robbery. He finds one case that follows him when he is suddenly transferred again after the death of a friend in homicide. He inherits a high profile case of a murdered escort and realizes there are commonalities between that case and the cold case he was working on.
Swinson does a fantastic job of making a reader feel as if this is actually what police work is about. It is not glamorous, cases are not cracked within the time frame of a made-for-TV movie, and the characters are fleshed out.
I was surprised to learn that A Detailed Man is Swinson's first novel.
It definitely rates five stars in my book list!
January 16, 2012
Review for and on behalf of the Kindle Book Review (KBR).
So, this was the first book I was asked to review as part of the KBR and I wasn’t disappointed!
The story is told from the point of view of Ezra Simeon, a seasoned Washington DC investigator. Simeon is sent to the Violent Crimes Unit (homicide) and it is here he picks up the case of an escort girls murder. Essentially the story follows Simeon as he makes links between this and ‘cold’ cases he has seen. The book cleverly explores the relationships between officers and civilians and we see the inner workings of an investigators mind as Simeon works to get to the bottom of the murder.
For a first novel I was really impressed with the writing style; it’s easy to read and is more akin to that of a seasoned writer. As a Brit reading this book, I enjoyed getting a taste of America and life as a US cop. It’s clear that Swinson has a background in this work and his attention to detail and clear explanations is testament to this.
The book isn’t a fast paced thriller, and things don’t happen just for the sake of it. It’s almost set at a day by day pace which works. I felt tired for Simeon as he describes his shift patterns and sleep patterns (or lack of it).
Despite being about a murder (and gruesome treatment of the body), there isn’t the usual gratuitous gore that you might expect. Injuries and case notes are presented in a clinical manner; much as I expect you’d find in a real life crime situation. What you do find is a really considered, well written and well paced book, with all lose ends tied up.
All in all, I found this to be a dark but detailed look at life as a Washington DC Detective and I hope we see more of Ezra Simeon; I feel there is much that could be uncovered with this character, including relationships with colleagues set before this book, and of course how his relationship with Clem develops, if it does.
For the Kindle Book Review - http://thekindlebookreview.blogspot.com/
So, this was the first book I was asked to review as part of the KBR and I wasn’t disappointed!
The story is told from the point of view of Ezra Simeon, a seasoned Washington DC investigator. Simeon is sent to the Violent Crimes Unit (homicide) and it is here he picks up the case of an escort girls murder. Essentially the story follows Simeon as he makes links between this and ‘cold’ cases he has seen. The book cleverly explores the relationships between officers and civilians and we see the inner workings of an investigators mind as Simeon works to get to the bottom of the murder.
For a first novel I was really impressed with the writing style; it’s easy to read and is more akin to that of a seasoned writer. As a Brit reading this book, I enjoyed getting a taste of America and life as a US cop. It’s clear that Swinson has a background in this work and his attention to detail and clear explanations is testament to this.
The book isn’t a fast paced thriller, and things don’t happen just for the sake of it. It’s almost set at a day by day pace which works. I felt tired for Simeon as he describes his shift patterns and sleep patterns (or lack of it).
Despite being about a murder (and gruesome treatment of the body), there isn’t the usual gratuitous gore that you might expect. Injuries and case notes are presented in a clinical manner; much as I expect you’d find in a real life crime situation. What you do find is a really considered, well written and well paced book, with all lose ends tied up.
All in all, I found this to be a dark but detailed look at life as a Washington DC Detective and I hope we see more of Ezra Simeon; I feel there is much that could be uncovered with this character, including relationships with colleagues set before this book, and of course how his relationship with Clem develops, if it does.
For the Kindle Book Review - http://thekindlebookreview.blogspot.com/
January 31, 2018
This is the third David Swinson novel that I've read in a row, having read read the two Frank Marr books first. This is Swinson's debut and it's also a cracker but is a different beast altogether from the Frank Marr series.
Ezra Simeon is a Washington D.C. Police Detective and is suffering form Bell's Palsy, which paralyses one side of his face and as a consequence, is currently on 'light duties' in the cold case department. Due to a death of a detective in the Homicide Department, Sim, as he is known, is detailed to the department to take over the dead cop's workload which includes the high profile murder of an escort girl, whose body was found mutilated by the Anacosta River. Sim also takes a couple of cold cases with him that he had initially started to investigate and which he had a previous connection. We follow Sim as he investigates the various murders in his own inimitable style.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Police procedural type novel, as I did Swinson's Frank Marr novels but where Marr is more a man of action and unconventional investigative means, Sim is a fairly straightforward investigator and the title refers to how Sim works, in that every detail must be recorded whether it be evidential or seemingly worthless. Sim is a complicated character and leads a fairly solitary life, being divorced from his wife and has minimal contact with his mother and sister. His only real friend is Clem, a female who he went to college, with in a seemingly previous life in L.A. where she still stays and that he now detests. Even that long distance friendship is at times difficult to maintain, although Sim obviously enjoys her company and their calls when he is in the mood. He has difficulty sleeping, partly because of his condition and he is burdened with images and feelings from previous crimes he has dealt with and in his darker moments can be full of self doubt. Because of the nature of the job he has abandoned pastimes that he previously enjoyed and keeps promising himself that he'll renew his interest in these things when he feels better. The book is not all downbeat though and there is some very dark 'cop' humour included and Sim himself can see the lighter side of the job too at times.
Unlike the Marr novels, this contains very little action but the real suspense is in the way Sim uncovers evidence and especially in the suspect interviews which are probably some of the best I've read. Sim has a reputation as being an expert interviewer and the way the questions and answers are interspersed with Sim's thinking is brilliant and is edge of the seat stuff.
I'm looking forward to reading whatever Swinson publishes next, which is rumoured to be a new Marr novel and on the strength of these three novels I can't wait. I always love it when I discover an author that is new to me and whose books really speak to me and I've certainly discovered a great new voice in David Swinson.
Ezra Simeon is a Washington D.C. Police Detective and is suffering form Bell's Palsy, which paralyses one side of his face and as a consequence, is currently on 'light duties' in the cold case department. Due to a death of a detective in the Homicide Department, Sim, as he is known, is detailed to the department to take over the dead cop's workload which includes the high profile murder of an escort girl, whose body was found mutilated by the Anacosta River. Sim also takes a couple of cold cases with him that he had initially started to investigate and which he had a previous connection. We follow Sim as he investigates the various murders in his own inimitable style.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Police procedural type novel, as I did Swinson's Frank Marr novels but where Marr is more a man of action and unconventional investigative means, Sim is a fairly straightforward investigator and the title refers to how Sim works, in that every detail must be recorded whether it be evidential or seemingly worthless. Sim is a complicated character and leads a fairly solitary life, being divorced from his wife and has minimal contact with his mother and sister. His only real friend is Clem, a female who he went to college, with in a seemingly previous life in L.A. where she still stays and that he now detests. Even that long distance friendship is at times difficult to maintain, although Sim obviously enjoys her company and their calls when he is in the mood. He has difficulty sleeping, partly because of his condition and he is burdened with images and feelings from previous crimes he has dealt with and in his darker moments can be full of self doubt. Because of the nature of the job he has abandoned pastimes that he previously enjoyed and keeps promising himself that he'll renew his interest in these things when he feels better. The book is not all downbeat though and there is some very dark 'cop' humour included and Sim himself can see the lighter side of the job too at times.
Unlike the Marr novels, this contains very little action but the real suspense is in the way Sim uncovers evidence and especially in the suspect interviews which are probably some of the best I've read. Sim has a reputation as being an expert interviewer and the way the questions and answers are interspersed with Sim's thinking is brilliant and is edge of the seat stuff.
I'm looking forward to reading whatever Swinson publishes next, which is rumoured to be a new Marr novel and on the strength of these three novels I can't wait. I always love it when I discover an author that is new to me and whose books really speak to me and I've certainly discovered a great new voice in David Swinson.
May 15, 2017
I came across David Swinson in 2016, after reading his breakout novel, "The Second Girl." It's a fantastic police procedural about a drug addicted MPD investigator, Frank Marr, who stumbles across a kidnapped girl in the home of an Adams Morgan drug gang that he's broken into with the hopes of scoring drugs. I loved the unreliable narrator, the Washington, D.C. setting, the clued-in knowledge about policing, and the way the story unfolds within Marr's addled head. Recently I found out that Swinson is coming out with a second Frank Marr novel. While waiting for it to be published, I decided to try his first novel, "A Detailed Man," published in 2012.
This is a very good book about another flawed MPD investigator - this time, a physically flawed one. Detective Ezra Simeon suffers from Bell's palsy, a condition that's left half his face frozen in a downward grimace. The book opens with him working on a cold case unit, after being re-assigned due to his condition. Simeon is assigned to homicide on a short detail and investigates the murder of a young escort discovered on the banks of the Anacostia river. The book is a bit hard to find, but well worth your time. I tore through it.
Like Detective Simeon, David Swinson suffers from Bell's palsy. He's also had one of the most interesting careers of any writer I've come across. Here's the text from the inside back cover of the book:
David Swinson spent the 1980s as a punk rock music promoter and film producer, booking acts like Social Distortion, Nick Cave, John Cale, Chris Isaac and the Red Hot Chili Peppers into clubs and producing spoken word events with Hunter S. Thompson, John Waters and Jim Carroll. He produced the cult classic film "Roadside Prophets," starring John Doe of X and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys and featuring Timothy Leary, John Cusack, David Carradine and Arlo Guthrie. In 1994, Swinson returned to his hometown of Washington DC and joined the police force, where he worked robbery, homicide and narcotics and became one of the city's most decorated detectives. In 2000 he was promoted to the Special Investigations Bureau/Major Crimes, where he was often called upon by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, The Treasury Department and The US Attorney's Office for assistance with sensitive cases. "A Detailed Man" is Swinson's first novel.
This is a very good book about another flawed MPD investigator - this time, a physically flawed one. Detective Ezra Simeon suffers from Bell's palsy, a condition that's left half his face frozen in a downward grimace. The book opens with him working on a cold case unit, after being re-assigned due to his condition. Simeon is assigned to homicide on a short detail and investigates the murder of a young escort discovered on the banks of the Anacostia river. The book is a bit hard to find, but well worth your time. I tore through it.
Like Detective Simeon, David Swinson suffers from Bell's palsy. He's also had one of the most interesting careers of any writer I've come across. Here's the text from the inside back cover of the book:
David Swinson spent the 1980s as a punk rock music promoter and film producer, booking acts like Social Distortion, Nick Cave, John Cale, Chris Isaac and the Red Hot Chili Peppers into clubs and producing spoken word events with Hunter S. Thompson, John Waters and Jim Carroll. He produced the cult classic film "Roadside Prophets," starring John Doe of X and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys and featuring Timothy Leary, John Cusack, David Carradine and Arlo Guthrie. In 1994, Swinson returned to his hometown of Washington DC and joined the police force, where he worked robbery, homicide and narcotics and became one of the city's most decorated detectives. In 2000 he was promoted to the Special Investigations Bureau/Major Crimes, where he was often called upon by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, The Treasury Department and The US Attorney's Office for assistance with sensitive cases. "A Detailed Man" is Swinson's first novel.
December 21, 2011
As an avid reader and a writer myself I tend to lean only toward bestsellers; but David Swinson took me for a ride with his first book. From the first sentence, I was enthralled by life in Washington D.C. from the eyes of a homicide detective named Ezra Simeon. The characters he has created, the relationships he builds, the bonds shared by officers of the law, and societal dynamics that exist between criminals and "normal" citizens and the media: Swinson has managed to captivate this reader and hold my life hostage for a full 24 hours, which is how long it took for me to read this book. I could not put it down. Each chapter is woven tightly and succinctly with perfection. For me, it would take a tremendous amount of research to write a book of this magnitude. Swinson's story is a recipe for the human condition, blended with empathy and the politics which exist in the legal system. This book showed me a life I could never comprehend, being a suburban dweller. It took me to places that I very likely will never go and into a world that for most of us would break our spirits and manages to write this marvelously balanced book. I hope there are sequels!
February 26, 2017
(3.5)-I thought this was a good police procedural and I particularly enjoyed how the protagonist handled interrogations and interviews as well as some unusual personal challenges. There were other elements of the plot that didn't seem like a good fit and were a distraction from the main story. A good read for me, but would have been better if the narrative had been more focused.
December 20, 2011
David Swinson's well-written narrative takes the reader straight into the streets. Never having been to Washington, I still was completely transported into his gritty world each time I read--and like sipping bourbon, reading this book is better done in small doses, savored and considered.
His protagonist struggles physically and emotionally with the cop job, while still persuing his cases with dogged persistence in the face of budget cuts, snafus and setbacks. A case of Bell's Palsy adds daily pathos as he drinks with a straw and wonders if he'll make it past his friend Spanns' early and ignominious death.
My only reservation about this well written book is it's pacing--kind of like life, David's detective wanders a bit. The chapters seem a little unrelated to each other, more like standalone essays, and the overall tone is dark if leavened by ironic humor and wry observations.
A worthy read by a detective with a literary way with prose.
His protagonist struggles physically and emotionally with the cop job, while still persuing his cases with dogged persistence in the face of budget cuts, snafus and setbacks. A case of Bell's Palsy adds daily pathos as he drinks with a straw and wonders if he'll make it past his friend Spanns' early and ignominious death.
My only reservation about this well written book is it's pacing--kind of like life, David's detective wanders a bit. The chapters seem a little unrelated to each other, more like standalone essays, and the overall tone is dark if leavened by ironic humor and wry observations.
A worthy read by a detective with a literary way with prose.
January 21, 2012
My first impression of this book is that it reads like a cop is telling the story. After reading the bio of the author, I know why. It's a bit like Law & Order come to life on the page. I appreciate being drawn into a world known only to those who have worked it. The start of the story is a bit slow and drawn out. It wasn't until halfway through that the action started. The main character was likeable; I was cheering for him to have a closer relationship with his "girl" friend, but that perhaps is not what the book was about. In the end, this story is an interesting take on the standard crime novel, almost a day-to-day look at how a homicide detective's life would be. Good read and worth my time.
January 26, 2015
You got to look to a cop to get it right when it comes to crime novels. Dave Swinson had a stellar career in the D.C. area. I read this a couple years and a couple hundred books ago. What still sticks with me about this is the nuances. His first person narrator was a decent, capable detective felled by Bell's Palsey, a facial paralysis that has him sidelined to a backwater desk job, stuck with other misfits and broken men running out the clock til retirement.
We know something is going to jar him out of his ennui, and it's going to be a crime, and so it came to be. The most intriguing conflict here is this capable individual sidelined by a ou irk of fate and of health and still rising to a better life.
Good stuff!
We know something is going to jar him out of his ennui, and it's going to be a crime, and so it came to be. The most intriguing conflict here is this capable individual sidelined by a ou irk of fate and of health and still rising to a better life.
Good stuff!
June 8, 2016
A well-written mystery/police procedural/crime book featuring DC Police Detective Ezra Simeon. Simeon was recently detailed to the Homicide Cold Case squad to give him a break and hopefully to give him the chance to recover from a persistent case of Bell's Palsy. Simeon's break doesn't last long and he's soon on the homicide squad handling a well publicized case. Written with a dry humor and an intimate knowledge of the DC Police, Swinson has written a good first book that is impossible to pigeon hole into a particular genre. I look forward to his next book.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I used to work with Swinson, who was an outstanding detective.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I used to work with Swinson, who was an outstanding detective.
December 8, 2016
Initially put off by the present tense narration and slow opening, when i was expecting a fairly standard police procedural. Went back later and got hooked in. An interesting narrator, and portrays the job of a detective that makes it feel like a real job: sometimes interesting, sometimes tedious, lots more paperwork than anyone wants. Turns out the author has some firsthand experience. Not my usual preference, but glad i picked this one up.
February 27, 2012
The book takes readers on a wonderful journey through the life and trials of not only a cop, but the difficulties affecting someone that has a disease. Granted its not a quick read, but it was wonderfully written and well detailed.
January 19, 2012
This was a really good novel by a retired DC police detective. I hope he writes some more. This is free on Kindle right now.
January 16, 2015
For my full review please visit The Mystery Bookshelf: http://wp.me/p6kwu-10E
May 19, 2012
[This review first appeared on Blogcritics]
A Detailed Man is destined to be categorized as a “police procedural.” David Swinson is destined to be categorized as an ex-cop. He is that. He spent sixteen years detailed to robbery and homicide in the Washington DC Police Force. He is also a first-rate writer, and his Detailed Man is not easily to be slotted into any sub-genre of crime-writing.
Yes, standard police-related topics crop up: forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants and interrogation. Of course they do. Ezra Simeon, the “detailed man” of the title, is a police detective in Washington DC. And it is Ezra Simeon that Swinson is writing about. Better put, it is Ezra Simeon’s voice that we hear, consistently, from start to finish, telling in the present tense and the first person what he is seeing, thinking, feeling, doing, over a period of winter weeks, Thanksgiving through Christmas and beyond.
The first line of the novel puts us, laconically and without preamble, right into the unfortunate physical condition that Simeon has to live with throughout these weeks, and at the same time into the work ethic that dominates his life:
“People think I’ve had a stroke. They say, “That’s what happens when you work too hard.”
Simeon’s face is paralyzed on one side, not by a stroke but by Bell’s palsy. He doesn’t deny that he has worked too hard, but he doesn’t want people to use his condition “to justify their low work ethics.” He has at this point been “detailed to Cold Case.” This, we discover on reading further, is the unit that houses unsolved cases. The expression “cold case” is simply thrown at us in the text, that is, in the voice of Simeon, unexplained, like all the other in-vocabulary of the police. Either we figure out things from the context, or we look them up. To read this novel is to hear the authentic voice of Ezra Simeon without narrative overlay.
It is this authentic voice that penetrates your head from start to finish and stays with you when you have read the last line. No monotony here. The voice has an amazing range, playing on images that we do not always immediately recognize as images. It is the voice of a detective who knows well how to write plain unadorned documents like a Death Report. “No literary masterpiece of criminal observation,” comments Detective Simeon, reading a cold-case description of a corpse left by a shooting at the intersection of 7th and O Streets. But then it turns out that this particular location will echo through the novel—7th and O--accruing highly evocative connotations of street justice. Thus does a street corner become a poetic device, and a plot-turner. The voice of Detective Simeon is also the voice of a man who reads books--he has hundreds of books on his shelves.
Simeon is a man in middle age, a failed marriage behind him, a career that is wearing him out, and that has not brought him to a settled position, “detailed,” as he always is, from one unit to another. There is one woman whom he seems to love but whose friendship he does not want to lose through ill-advised declarations of affection. Often in the novel, he goes into a kind of trance that removes him from the scene into a place of no-feeling, sometimes he calls it a “foggy haze.” His weariness is a thread running through the novel, along with other afflictions resulting from his Bell’s palsy--his inability to eat or drink without dribbling things down his chin, to smile without grimacing, to look in a mirror without shocking himself. But this thread does not set the keynote of the novel; it does not overwhelm the highly suspenseful plot-line. Rather it throws into sharp relief the dogged detective’s unrelenting pursuit of the depraved, the cruel, the truly criminal who are assigned to him in his case-jackets, a pursuit nonetheless attended by his clear-headed, regretful but unsentimental recognition of the way young criminals are created and can have no hope.
David Swinson’s knowledge of real crime gives this novel a frightening authenticity that will pull up short readers and writers who dabble in murder mystery for fun. This comes out not only in graphic descriptions of crime scenes, of police offices, of Washington’s mean streets, it also surfaces in comments made calmly by Detective Simeon on the neighborhoods he knows so well. Thus, speaking of the young man, Grim, gunned down on his street corner, he says:
“I knew a lot of mothers too and a lot of kids like Grim who used to walk and talk like little kids should. I watched most of them grow, some not. They all learned how to walk like Grim and all the other big boys who trailed behind him who were slinging dope on the corner ever day, And talking to most of them, they all knew their time was short. Even the somewhat decent mothers knew it was bound to happen.
It paid the rent. It bought the food. It never lasts.”
Simple devastating prose. Simple devastating truth.
Not for fun. I don’t think David Swinson is writing this for fun.
Not that he ever seems to be writing to educate the reader, still less to pontificate about crime. He tells a great story that keeps you rapidly turning pages. Simeon, in his dogged way, tracks down a serial killer, he fights the lethargy of colleagues who would prefer to see the case closed, he brings justice and some peace to a decent family destroyed by senseless thuggery, all the time using the language and the understanding he has built up of young street dealers in their “baggy, low rider pants” to convey his own differentiated versions of justice. There are several great interrogation scenes in the novel, none cleverer than the one when Simeon arrests a young drug-dealer on a lesser charge only to lead him in the direction of confessing to a greater crime. Simeon is no do-gooder. His sympathies are no more engaged on the side of the perpetrator than they are left cold by the sufferings of the victims and victim’s families. What is impressive is that this man, who talks again and again about his inability to feel—“I feel like the walking dead”—conveys in spare unemotional language sometimes bursting into striking images his acute involvement in the lives of the people he is dealing with, none of them, you would think, subjects for a poet. But Swinson has a poet’s sensibility.
And a poet’s ability to structure complexity without tying up all the ends neatly. Various unconnected cases run parallel through the novel—typical of the police procedural as distinct from the traditional one-case detective novel. But Simeon’s own connection to each of these cases gives the sense of a unified plot. The novel comes to a strong conclusion, not only in the de rigueur action-scene in which the detective is pitted gun to gun against the primary criminal of the novel, but in a strangely affecting postscript in which two officially unresolved cases leave us on the one hand with pity for another likely victim of the worst crime in the book but also with fellow-feeling for the perpetrator of another crimes. The last paragraphs of the novel encapsulate some of this and are a poetic masterpiece. But you would have to read the whole novel to see why. A reviewer may not tell you the end of a murder mystery.
Murder mystery? Police procedural? Whatever you call it, this is a highly complex, first-rate novel, not to be lost to a wide readership through the folly of easy categorization.
A Detailed Man is destined to be categorized as a “police procedural.” David Swinson is destined to be categorized as an ex-cop. He is that. He spent sixteen years detailed to robbery and homicide in the Washington DC Police Force. He is also a first-rate writer, and his Detailed Man is not easily to be slotted into any sub-genre of crime-writing.
Yes, standard police-related topics crop up: forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants and interrogation. Of course they do. Ezra Simeon, the “detailed man” of the title, is a police detective in Washington DC. And it is Ezra Simeon that Swinson is writing about. Better put, it is Ezra Simeon’s voice that we hear, consistently, from start to finish, telling in the present tense and the first person what he is seeing, thinking, feeling, doing, over a period of winter weeks, Thanksgiving through Christmas and beyond.
The first line of the novel puts us, laconically and without preamble, right into the unfortunate physical condition that Simeon has to live with throughout these weeks, and at the same time into the work ethic that dominates his life:
“People think I’ve had a stroke. They say, “That’s what happens when you work too hard.”
Simeon’s face is paralyzed on one side, not by a stroke but by Bell’s palsy. He doesn’t deny that he has worked too hard, but he doesn’t want people to use his condition “to justify their low work ethics.” He has at this point been “detailed to Cold Case.” This, we discover on reading further, is the unit that houses unsolved cases. The expression “cold case” is simply thrown at us in the text, that is, in the voice of Simeon, unexplained, like all the other in-vocabulary of the police. Either we figure out things from the context, or we look them up. To read this novel is to hear the authentic voice of Ezra Simeon without narrative overlay.
It is this authentic voice that penetrates your head from start to finish and stays with you when you have read the last line. No monotony here. The voice has an amazing range, playing on images that we do not always immediately recognize as images. It is the voice of a detective who knows well how to write plain unadorned documents like a Death Report. “No literary masterpiece of criminal observation,” comments Detective Simeon, reading a cold-case description of a corpse left by a shooting at the intersection of 7th and O Streets. But then it turns out that this particular location will echo through the novel—7th and O--accruing highly evocative connotations of street justice. Thus does a street corner become a poetic device, and a plot-turner. The voice of Detective Simeon is also the voice of a man who reads books--he has hundreds of books on his shelves.
Simeon is a man in middle age, a failed marriage behind him, a career that is wearing him out, and that has not brought him to a settled position, “detailed,” as he always is, from one unit to another. There is one woman whom he seems to love but whose friendship he does not want to lose through ill-advised declarations of affection. Often in the novel, he goes into a kind of trance that removes him from the scene into a place of no-feeling, sometimes he calls it a “foggy haze.” His weariness is a thread running through the novel, along with other afflictions resulting from his Bell’s palsy--his inability to eat or drink without dribbling things down his chin, to smile without grimacing, to look in a mirror without shocking himself. But this thread does not set the keynote of the novel; it does not overwhelm the highly suspenseful plot-line. Rather it throws into sharp relief the dogged detective’s unrelenting pursuit of the depraved, the cruel, the truly criminal who are assigned to him in his case-jackets, a pursuit nonetheless attended by his clear-headed, regretful but unsentimental recognition of the way young criminals are created and can have no hope.
David Swinson’s knowledge of real crime gives this novel a frightening authenticity that will pull up short readers and writers who dabble in murder mystery for fun. This comes out not only in graphic descriptions of crime scenes, of police offices, of Washington’s mean streets, it also surfaces in comments made calmly by Detective Simeon on the neighborhoods he knows so well. Thus, speaking of the young man, Grim, gunned down on his street corner, he says:
“I knew a lot of mothers too and a lot of kids like Grim who used to walk and talk like little kids should. I watched most of them grow, some not. They all learned how to walk like Grim and all the other big boys who trailed behind him who were slinging dope on the corner ever day, And talking to most of them, they all knew their time was short. Even the somewhat decent mothers knew it was bound to happen.
It paid the rent. It bought the food. It never lasts.”
Simple devastating prose. Simple devastating truth.
Not for fun. I don’t think David Swinson is writing this for fun.
Not that he ever seems to be writing to educate the reader, still less to pontificate about crime. He tells a great story that keeps you rapidly turning pages. Simeon, in his dogged way, tracks down a serial killer, he fights the lethargy of colleagues who would prefer to see the case closed, he brings justice and some peace to a decent family destroyed by senseless thuggery, all the time using the language and the understanding he has built up of young street dealers in their “baggy, low rider pants” to convey his own differentiated versions of justice. There are several great interrogation scenes in the novel, none cleverer than the one when Simeon arrests a young drug-dealer on a lesser charge only to lead him in the direction of confessing to a greater crime. Simeon is no do-gooder. His sympathies are no more engaged on the side of the perpetrator than they are left cold by the sufferings of the victims and victim’s families. What is impressive is that this man, who talks again and again about his inability to feel—“I feel like the walking dead”—conveys in spare unemotional language sometimes bursting into striking images his acute involvement in the lives of the people he is dealing with, none of them, you would think, subjects for a poet. But Swinson has a poet’s sensibility.
And a poet’s ability to structure complexity without tying up all the ends neatly. Various unconnected cases run parallel through the novel—typical of the police procedural as distinct from the traditional one-case detective novel. But Simeon’s own connection to each of these cases gives the sense of a unified plot. The novel comes to a strong conclusion, not only in the de rigueur action-scene in which the detective is pitted gun to gun against the primary criminal of the novel, but in a strangely affecting postscript in which two officially unresolved cases leave us on the one hand with pity for another likely victim of the worst crime in the book but also with fellow-feeling for the perpetrator of another crimes. The last paragraphs of the novel encapsulate some of this and are a poetic masterpiece. But you would have to read the whole novel to see why. A reviewer may not tell you the end of a murder mystery.
Murder mystery? Police procedural? Whatever you call it, this is a highly complex, first-rate novel, not to be lost to a wide readership through the folly of easy categorization.
February 27, 2018
"Man, this book's not so great. I mean, I guess it's okay. Yeah, not the best but... I guess I'll keep reading. Gee, I've been reading it for four hours straight. What, it's over? Oh, man."
It snuck up on me, how good it is. The detective is delightful and dark, obsessive and weird, lonely and kind of crazy. The dialogue is fun. The internal monologue is killer.
It gets a little claustrophobic, in our narrator's head. But that honestly is part of the joy of it. The book itself feels real, with a kind of rolling chaotic sprawling weirdness. Its realism is almost its downfall. Maybe there won't be any answers. Maybe there is no narrative. Maybe we're not going anywhere. That tension ends up working in its favour.
"Yeah," the author seems to be saying, "maybe I won't give you any damn answers. I don't owe you anything."
I started to obsess over the book the way the narrator obsessed over his cop job.
The book feels so self contained and a thing unto itself, so it's hard to imagine what other sorts of novels David Swinson has written. I will have to check those other books out. I hope he doesn't bring this same detective into his other books, because that would be heresy.
It snuck up on me, how good it is. The detective is delightful and dark, obsessive and weird, lonely and kind of crazy. The dialogue is fun. The internal monologue is killer.
It gets a little claustrophobic, in our narrator's head. But that honestly is part of the joy of it. The book itself feels real, with a kind of rolling chaotic sprawling weirdness. Its realism is almost its downfall. Maybe there won't be any answers. Maybe there is no narrative. Maybe we're not going anywhere. That tension ends up working in its favour.
"Yeah," the author seems to be saying, "maybe I won't give you any damn answers. I don't owe you anything."
I started to obsess over the book the way the narrator obsessed over his cop job.
The book feels so self contained and a thing unto itself, so it's hard to imagine what other sorts of novels David Swinson has written. I will have to check those other books out. I hope he doesn't bring this same detective into his other books, because that would be heresy.
July 22, 2018
Great Read !! Highly recommend. Looking forward to the next one
Mr Swinson certainly knows his territory and expresses himself in an interesting and somewhat unusual way. I really enjoyed this story and finished it in two sittings. Can't wait for the next.
Mr Swinson certainly knows his territory and expresses himself in an interesting and somewhat unusual way. I really enjoyed this story and finished it in two sittings. Can't wait for the next.
June 4, 2017
Washington DC setting, police procedural, narrator a loner detective with a personal problem (of course). OK, but not George Pelecanos.
October 30, 2017
The more I read the better it gets
Great book with an intimate knowledge of real police work and procedures, he is the real thing watch out Michael Comely
Great book with an intimate knowledge of real police work and procedures, he is the real thing watch out Michael Comely
March 8, 2019
Not as good as the Frank Marr series. But not bad.
August 15, 2023
I love David Swinson, and I wanted to read this book for a long time. It's a great story, well told. But the book is badly edited.
April 29, 2012
This book moved so slowly I spent my time while I was reading it watching the kindle percentages go up and wondering when something was going to happen. It's about a policeman working on homicide cases but none of the cases are really compelling and the whole thing just crawls along at a snail's pace. When I read at the end that the author was a former DC cop, it made more sense because a lot of the book was the main character (a DC cop) going to different office buildings in DC to get reports and subpoenas. The author seemed to take a lot of pride in knowing the exact floor number of the building where this certain office is located. That's great but it doesn't equal a plot. Unfortunately I'd have to say this is a book to skip.
December 26, 2012
A wonderfully gripping and well-written police procedural, as much a hero's journey as a mystery its writing held me in the grip of its story. Detective Ezra Simeon has always been driven in his work - so much so that he has begun suffering from Bell's Palsy and is living with a partially paralyzed face. In a holding pattern waiting for retirement, Simeon is called by an old friend to take over a high profile case from their mutual friend who has been murdered. The course of the case, the discovery of the mystery, and the reclamation of a great detective makes for a super read.
February 4, 2012
Reading this book felt like moving through a fog. The narrator is foggy - depressed, sleepless, and battling Bell's Palsy. The title is appropriate - we get a lot of detailed, blow-by-blow descriptions of his investigations and daily routine. It's very well described but feels tedious. I'm sure it's realistic but it isn't always the most riveting reading.
June 2, 2016
Good story
This was a somewhat dark but excellent read. We follow the course of a Washington detective who is been on leave and covers a cold case that links to a more recent case involves two men some prostitutes and a long simmering anger. Dark and long read but good nonetheless
This was a somewhat dark but excellent read. We follow the course of a Washington detective who is been on leave and covers a cold case that links to a more recent case involves two men some prostitutes and a long simmering anger. Dark and long read but good nonetheless
September 13, 2012
Interesting take on the detective novel as the main character not only deals with working the cases that he's been assigned, but he also has to deal with the onset of Bell's Palsy and the questions surrounding his life outside of work.
June 11, 2016
Fantastic police detective thriller!
Hard to believe it's author's first novel, with the in depth & personable characters. Intense & thrilling with lots of twists. Keeps you on edge until the end. I highly recommend this book & looking forward to more writing from this author.
Hard to believe it's author's first novel, with the in depth & personable characters. Intense & thrilling with lots of twists. Keeps you on edge until the end. I highly recommend this book & looking forward to more writing from this author.
July 30, 2016
A dark thriller. The lead detective does not have a happy personal life but is likeable nonetheless. An enjoyable story with sort of a happy ending. Worth reading if you like Henning Mankell type books.
February 11, 2012
ok, but gets boring near end
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