The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

« Headlines

Canongate gets on 'The Wire'

27.08.08 Katie Allen

Canongate is to release the UK edition of the book that inspired the acclaimed US TV series "The Wire".

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by "The Wire" creator David Simon was first published in the US in 1992. Canongate bought the UK rights earlier this year and will publish on 4th September. The new edition is a 656-page trade paperback priced £12.99.

Homicide will be promoted in the UK at "The Wire Weekend" being held at the Curzon Soho cinema in London from 20th–21st September, which includes a showing of season five; an interview with Simon by journalist and author Misha Glenny; and Q&As between Simon and crime writer Mark Billingham, Guardian columnist and author Charlie Brooker, and several members of the cast including Dominic West.

Simon will also appear at the Glasgow Film Theatre on the 18th September and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin on the 19th September.

As a journalist on the Baltimore Sun, Simon spent a year with the Baltimore Police Department in the late Eighties, which he wrote about in Homicide. The book inspired a number of television series, including "Homicide: Life on the Street", and "The Wire", which he co-created with writer and former detective Ed Burns.

The fifth and final series is being broadcast in the UK on digital channel FX, and will be released on DVD on 22 September.

Other publicity for Homicide from the end of August includes features in the Guardian Weekend, Saturday Telegraph Magazine, the Times and the Sunday Herald, with interviews on BBC Radio 4 "Saturday Review" and "Front Row" and in publications including GQ, The Word, the Evening Standard, Esquire and Loaded.

Canongate Katie Allen News