Before The Wire, there was The Corner. David Simon and Ed Burns’ cult hit HBO series is lauded by many critics as the best television show ever made. In fact, one literary critic has infamously asked why The Wire is so much better than most contemporary novels. It’s Dickens does twentieth century Baltimore, dissecting a failed city – one of America’s notorious crime capitals – layer by layer, from the perspectives of police, the drug denizens, ordinary citizens, the political system, the media and the school system.

Underpinning the show – and explaining the intricate accuracy of its portraits and the knifepoint savviness of its social analysis – are two monumental works of reportage that display all the brilliant characterisation of The Wire. The first was Homicide, Simons’ impressive first book (lauded by Norman Mailer), based on his year embedded in Baltimore’s homicide unit. There, he met Burns, a homicide detective and former schoolteacher who first teamed with him for this follow-up, which explores the other side of the equation – life in the heart of the ghetto, on the drug corners, viewed from the inside over the course of a year, focusing on one block and a handful of families. Gripping, heartbreaking, unmissable.