The book won the 1992 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. He initially faced negative reactions from the detectives but he persevered in 'seeming like part of the furniture' going as far as cutting his long hair and they slowly accepted him. Simon approached the editors of the paper and the police department and received their approval. The idea came from a conversation on Christmas Eve 1985 in the unit office where an associate named Brian Landry told him that he would read a book chronicling their activities for a year. The book was based on his experiences shadowing the members of the Baltimore Police Department homicide unit for the year of 1988. The leave of absence resulted in Simon's first book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991). Main article: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets He searched for a reason to justify a leave of absence and settled on the idea of writing a novel.

When the strike ended he remained angry and began to feel uncomfortable in the writing room. He was a Union Captain when the writing staff went on strike in 1987 over cuts in their benefits. His main aim later in his career was to tell the best possible story without cheating it. Simon claims that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience. A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was 'God's work'. He spent most of his career covering the crime beat. Upon leaving college he worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1983 to 1995. While at college he wrote for the campus paper and became friends with his contemporary David Mills. Simon graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park.

1.3 Homicide:A Year on the Killing Streets.

Simon also co-created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which began in 2010. He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011.

He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into an HBO mini-series and served as the show runner for the project.

Simon adapted the latter book into the Emmy Award winning HBO mini-series The Corner. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, on which Simon served as a writer and producer. He wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood with Ed Burns. He worked as a journalist before that and wrote for the Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years. He has been active in the motion picture industry since 1993. He was an Executive Producer and writer throughout the show's five season run. 60 David Simon, born 1960 in Washington, D.C., USA, is a motion picture writer and producer.

The corner david simon series