If you’re a fan of crime fiction, odds are you’re a fan of The Wire, the brilliant, sprawling HBO crime drama created by former Baltimore Sun journalist David Simon. After every episode I would read innumerable recaps and interviews, desperate to learn more about this world and the inspirations of its creators. I read every—mostly combative, always insightful—interview with David Simon in which he lambasted the numerous institutions that have failed us. For fellow Wire junkies, this Edgar-nominated book is a 600-page fix. At its heart, The Wire is about the city of Baltimore and its inhabitants, and a society corrupted from the top down by politicians and cops who are more concerned with preserving their jobs and shoring up power than cleaning up the streets, a school system that prioritizes meaningless tests ahead of the ability to keep its kids away from the infamous corners, and an economic structure where the drug trade is the largest employer and most profitable endeavor. Written by Rafael Alvarez, a staff writer on the show, and containing essays by Simon, crime novelists Laura Lippman and George Pelecanos, along with other show notables, THE WIRE: TRUTH BE TOLD expands on the mythos of the show, detailing the painstaking effort taken by Simon et al to prove that fiction can be more truthful than fact. As Simon says in his scorching introduction: “This is the world of The Wire, the America left behind.”