The collapse of a tenement building sparks this panoramic view of life in a New York neighbourhood, from a writer on The Wire

When the explosion shakes New York’s East Harlem one morning in 2008, Royal Davis is dozing in a coffin, his face itching behind a prosthetic as students film a zombie movie in his funeral parlour. Veteran detective Mary Roe is arresting a homeless man who has just presented a bank with a ransom note. And would-be film-maker Felix Pearl is struggling to sleep in the multi-tenanted brownstone he calls home before his room starts to “flutter” and he is flung into the wall, his nose popping with blood.

The blast comes from a five-storey tenement that has collapsed nearby, cloaking everything in acrid dust. As sirens wail and helicopters hover “like small black spiders beneath the roiling sky”, Price’s ensemble mobilises. Royal, spotting that death may be on onlookers’ minds, enlists his young son to pass out business cards. Mary begins to search for the missing. Felix grabs his camera to shoot: a man yelling at oncoming traffic, another praying by an ambulance, a mute, ash-caked woman standing with her howling dog.