David Simon is a writer-producer of the TV cop show Homicide; Edward Burns is a policeman-turned-high school teacher. Their devotion to Baltimore registers in this heartfelt report from the depths of the city's drug subculture, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood. Their descriptions of small-time pushers and addicts give human faces to the anonymous underclass. What's missing, alas, are human voices. Take, for example, Gary McCullough, a former steelworker who is reduced to shoplifting to support his drug habit. McCullough reads Thoreau for pleasure — but not once in this saga does his eloquence emerge. What could have been a great book instead tends toward canned drama, another dose of Friday-night TV. B+
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