Thank you NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this book ahead of time in exchange for a review. You should read it!

The author takes a comprehensive look into how white-collar crime surrounding mortgages back in the 70s led to entire neighborhoods becoming crime ridden and ruined. It’s very informative and in depth. Sadly, it shows that similar crimes are still going on, and not even being prosecuted.

This is a chaotic book. It took me about a quarter of the book to realize that the author was going back and forth between the FHA scandal and the people/buildings in East New York every other chapter.

The chapters about East New York was spectacular. I loved them, I felt like I knew the places and the people. It was a hard read with all of the brutal murders, the abandoned buildings and even a serial killer.

The chapters about the FHA scandal....I needed to have a flow sheet, a flow graph and a cast of characters to try to keep things/people straight. It was so dense, I still have no idea what the FHA scandal was about.
Then near the end of the book, the sentences were handed out and I was like, who is this guy? Was this guy mentioned before?

Overall the author did a poor job of connecting the FHA scandal to the destruction of the neighborhood of East New York. She brought up the Broken Windows theory and then dismisses it, so she can't tie the abandoned buildings to the heightened crime wave.
Further, all of a sudden there is a HUGE decrease in murders in the 1990s. The FHA scandal was over and it was before the subprime mortgage crisis of the 2008's. So what caused the decrease in murders? The author does not mention it.

For this to be a great book, there needs to be a full explanation of how the FHA scandal worked. Further, the author should focus on a handful of the main actors, describe their roles within the scam/scandal and then follow them through the court procedures.

Overall, a book that left me bewildered.

I received a free copy of, The Killing Fields of East New York, by Stacy Horn, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. So many senseless murders, and crime in East New York, so many crooked people too. This book was eye opening for me to see what those poor people went through. This is such a great read on how horrible people can be when they become greedy.