The title of Edward Conlon's sterling cop memoir Blue Blood immediately prepares readers for irony ahead, perhaps some exposé about systemic corruption within the doggedly insular institution of the New York Police Department. "Blue blood" implies a kind of conformity, marked by generations of officers who would be more inclined to close ranks than blow whistles on their compatriots. Even Conlon's superiors could be forgiven for worrying that the Harvard-educated writer is telling tales out of school, even though he comes from a traditional pedigree of strong Irish-Catholic stock. They'll be relieved to know that Conlon has no intention of playing Serpico, but they may blanch at all the demoralizing bureaucracy and power grabs that make doing a noble job that much harder.
A sprawling, loose-limbed collection of funny and harrowing on-the-clock anecdotes, broken up by numerous digressions into family and institutional history, Blue Blood makes up in observation what it lacks in shape. Conlon began writing about "the Job" in 1997, when he published the first of several pseudonymous "Cop Diary" columns in The New Yorker, and the book has the feel of a giant compendium of entries, which makes it more accessible in bite-size chunks than in its exhaustive whole. But in his thorough accounting of life on the force, Conlon mounts an honest and spirited defense of the men behind the badges, who generally do good work in the face of public suspicion and aggravating regulations, not to mention the day-to-day menace of the streets.
Descended from four generations of NYPD blue, including a great-grandfather who was on the take and a father who left his post for the FBI, Conlon graduated from the Academy at 30 and was assigned as a housing cop in the South Bronx. Like many large public structures in the project, his building was intended as a forward-looking urban community, but had long since gone to seed, ravaged by drugs and violent crime. His experiences there ranged from a major (and horrifically flubbed) drug bust to a crazy old woman with a crazier cat, but he enjoyed playing the role of caretaker and accepting the accompanying small rewards. His optimism continued when he was promoted to the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, where he was part of a close-knit team that broke up drug "sets" in the area. Only later, after the unfair departure of a beloved sergeant, did the Job start seeming like a job, due to petty conflicts with some of the top brass.
Having climbed the ranks to detective after a long stint with Narcotics, Conlon hasn't lost his commitment and faith, especially with regard to his fellow officers, whom he feels were unfairly perceived during Mayor Giuliani's tenure. For one, Conlon believes all the minor, "clean up the streets" measures that were stepped up under Giuliani's watch led to more major infractions. But mainly, the NYPD's reputation for harassment and abuse rankles him: While Conlon has no use for Justin Volpe, the officer who sodomized Abner Louima with a broomstick, he's surprisingly unwilling to tsk at the cops who shot Amadou Diallo 41 times, noting "there was little doubt that they had acted without malice, in the belief of a hideous necessity, the defense of their own and their partners' lives." Here and elsewhere in Conlon's powerful book, he chooses to close ranks, but not before persuasively arguing for the public trust.