Helpful Score: 1
Be warned: once you sink your teeth into Pelecanos, it may be hard to be satiated.
This violent, explosive, page-turning crime fiction centers around Washington D.C. The city is a startlingly realistic motif throughout this book and others in the four-book series. Pelecanos has you hearing the footsteps in the dark D.C. alley, the smells of a nervous, sweating drug dealer awaiting his minions.
The characters Pelecanos conjures up - they are as real to me as people I'm acquainted with. You can't help but get pulled in by the interweaving story lines, the author's narrative genius, and the palpably pulsing plot that demands you'd don't put it down.
If not already, one day this book will be a classic.
This violent, explosive, page-turning crime fiction centers around Washington D.C. The city is a startlingly realistic motif throughout this book and others in the four-book series. Pelecanos has you hearing the footsteps in the dark D.C. alley, the smells of a nervous, sweating drug dealer awaiting his minions.
The characters Pelecanos conjures up - they are as real to me as people I'm acquainted with. You can't help but get pulled in by the interweaving story lines, the author's narrative genius, and the palpably pulsing plot that demands you'd don't put it down.
If not already, one day this book will be a classic.
Helpful Score: 1
Another "hard-boiled" Pelecanos 'D.C' crime novel. Really captures part of the '70s post Vietnam culture. Love the early looks at key characters, Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karas. Lots of great references for the rock/soul/funk audiophile too.
Crime novel set in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Lots of atmosphere--you find out what kinds of songs played on the radio, what kind of shoes people wore, how much breakfast at a diner cost, and what a close-range buckshot head wound looks like. George Pelecanos has created his own world of drug dealers, record-store clerks, police, and thieves.
Pelecanos has also written several episodes of the HBO series "The Wire," so if you like that, you'll probably like this too.
Pelecanos has also written several episodes of the HBO series "The Wire," so if you like that, you'll probably like this too.
This is a real "guy's writer." Lots of violence. Pelecanos writes lyrically and realistically. His dialogue is spot on. Cheech and Chong meet Pulp Fiction in a retro novel of Seventies drug culture. Small-time pot dealer Dimitri Karras and record-store owner Marcus Clay stumble into the wrong warehouse looking for weed and pocket some hot cash in the bargain. They are pursued by a gang of trigger-crazed lowlifes more concerned with savoring the taste of Kools and death than recovering their money. Dimitri slowly begins to realize that he's wasted many years dealing to kids and getting high. He proves his desire for redemption to Marcus by participating in a rooftop showdown with the Wilton Cooper gang.
