Someday someone will write a serious book on "The Wire" that will be worthy of its subject but until then I'll happily read all the crappy ones. Such contrast is best illustrated by the character of Omar, a stick-up man who is noble, who has his own code, but who also knows what he is — a person who makes a living off of illegal drugs, just like the lawyer questioning him. From an aesthetic point of view, it would have been better if there were more colour plates as the numerous half-tones used in the text tend to give the book a slightly cheap appearance. But ultimately, the storytelling that speaks to our current condition, that grapples with the basic realities and contradictions of our immediate world -- these are stories that, in the end, have a small chance of presenting a social, and even political, argument. For the court, Omar identifies Bird as the man who murdered a man named Gant, a state witness whose death launched the arc of Season One. Return to Book Page.
He looked at me searchingly a moment, then his face twisted in uncertainty. And now and then a man had been killed or a woman or child ambushed.
He is the hero of the other epic by homer, the odyssey.