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Wire creator to Canongate

30.05.08 John Ryan

David Simon, creator of hit television series "The Wire", has been signed by Canongate for two true crime titles.

Both books are billed as "immersion journalism". The first, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, has sold more than 500,000 copies in the US, picking up an Edgar Award for Best True Crime Book. Together with The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighbourhood, it formed the backdrop to Baltimore-based cop drama "The Wire", which made its first appearance in 2002.

Nick Davies bought UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) in ­Homicide from David Grossman on behalf of Holt in the US, and in The Corner directly from Doubleday US.

The Corner will be published next April, and Homicide next September, alongside the DVD launch of the fifth and final series of "The Wire". Simon will be in the UK to promote the book and will be at the heart of a dedicated "Wire Weekend" festival in London.

"Homicide and The Corner are immersion journalism, each representing a year following lives through the American diaspora of violence and addiction," said Simon, a former journalist for the Baltimore Sun.

"They comprise the detailed reporting and analysis in which HBO's 'The Wire' is firmly rooted. Both narratives argue above all that individual lives and individual experience matter, that human beings cannot be discounted or marginalised and that the American experiment does so at its peril."

John Ryan Rights deal Canongate The Wire

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