Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

I know it's early yet, but this is the best book I've read in 2015, and it might remain so. For over a decade Leovy has reported on murder in L.A., especially on the killing of black men (and boys) by black men (and boys) in the south side of the city, and in Ghettoside she does justice to a vast and varied range of characters: victims (often chosen nearly at random), killers (often motivated by revenge), witnesses (often terrified and reluctant), and especially the few dogged homicide detectives who refuse to shrug and let murders go unsolved. And from this daily tragedy she builds a compelling conclusion: that black-on-black homicide flourishes because it is not punished; while the law harasses African Americans over pretexts and petty crimes, it declines to protect them from the worst crime of all. It's a complex, subtly skillful, and necessary book.