S Street Rising: Crack, Murder and Redemption in D. C.

A streetwise reporter takes a walk on Washington’s wild side in this gritty but unfocused memoir. Castaneda began his career as a Washington Post metro reporter at the height of the city’s crack cocaine and murder epidemics of the late 1980s and early 1990s, covering countless drug-related homicides and the city’s notorious mayor Marion Barry, who was arrested on narcotics charges while in office. Going a little too far with his research, Castaneda became a crack addict, binging away his money while fretting that dealers might recognize him at crime scenes and blackmail him. He paints an engrossing portrait of this woozy, lubricious demimonde and of the S Street ghetto where he scored, with vivid portraits of crack-addicted prostitutes he befriended, a pastor who was also protected by a drug kingpin, and of a charismatic police captain trying to reform the department and stem Washington’s chaos. Once Castaneda gets clean, the episodic narrative sputters unevenly; he recounts tense crime set pieces, including a bloody shooting spree at police headquarters, but also much feckless office politics as he tussles with editors over assignments and raises. At his best, Castaneda writes movingly of the unlikely wellsprings of solidarity and hope in communities that society has written off. (July)