In Macedo, Katz found the story of a lifetime … It’s a credit to Katz’s skill, compassion and sheer doggedness...that Macedo emerges from this narrative not as the demon that he flirted with, but as an all too ordinary kid, sad and scatterbrained, neither malevolent nor particularly brave … The Rent Collectors is filled with such choices that are not choices: impossible crossroads in the lives of people constrained on all sides by forces that will not bend. Katz is acutely attentive not only to the flesh-and-blood personalities that make his story so compelling, but to the structures that both shape and confine them
Katz has constructed an ethnography of the crime, locating it within the intricate lacework of history, geography, policing and politics that the crime was knotted to ... Katz...brings his formidable skills to mapping the territory of Macedo’s crime ... Katz has constructed a riveting and masterful urban narrative ... Sets out to understand an evil act and asks whether atonement and redemption are possible for the person who did it. It finds a web of meaning in which all of us are suspended, implying that many other crimes could be understood in such a holistic way if we took the time. As much as is possible after such a senseless tragedy, Katz makes some sense out of that September day.
With admirable clarity and compassion, Katz unravels a complex narrative that has no easy answers ... Thorough ... The result is relentless, multi-faceted, and incisive.
