Rejacketed alongside first paperback of Hard Revolution to mark George Pelecanos's transfer to George Pelecanos's transfer to Phoenix 'The coolest writer in America' GQ 'Pelecanos gets better with each book...This is crime writing of great quality' TELEGRAPH 'HELL TO PAY is a magnificently written, multi-layered novel of violence and despair that grabs you by the lapels and refuses to leave you alone even when it's done. Boy, that Pelecanos can write' TIME OUT 'A thriller that transcends genres and establishes Pelecanos as not just a great crime writer but as a great writer, period' THE TIMES 'This is a wonderful book ... it is a story of ordinary - and often evil - people, written with an acute understanding of human frailties. There are no small subjects or themes, and Pelecanos cleverly draws you, slowly but surely, into his web of deceit' GUARDIAN Pelecanos manages an independent production company responsible for such films as the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona and Barton Fink
George Pelecanos is a screenwriter, independent film producer, award-winning journalist, and the author of a bestselling series of novels set in and around Washington DC, where he lives with his wife and children.
Having debuted in Right as Rain, the interracial private investigator team of Derek Strange and Terry Quinn here returns to the mean streets of Washington, DC. African American Strange, the older and wiser or at least more experienced of the duo, is initially contacted by some police officers who want him and Quinn to find a teen runaway working as a prostitute. They accept the job, while Strange simultaneously examines the background of the flashy fiance of a friend's daughter. Also a coach at an after-school football league, Strange finds that his investigations impact his team, and he is made painfully aware of the precarious lives of DC's black youth, too often victims of sudden violence. As always, Pelecanos handles the infrequent bouts of brutal action expertly, but the heart of the book resides in the conversations about music, race, and life that occur in the local streets, restaurants, and bars. Pelecanos's growing body of fans won't be disappointed, and Hell To Pay just might attract new readers who enjoy gritty urban tales of the type featured on the late, lamented TV series Homicide. For all larger public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/01.] Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
You know you're in Pelecanos country when the music begins early a trio of street thugs on their way to a dogfight listen to "the new DMX joint on PGC, turned up loud" and continues to throb all the way through this second book in the author's hardboiled and heartbreaking series centered around Washington, D.C., private detective Derek Strange. A black man in his 50s, Strange first notices these particular thugs when they hang out around a Pee Wee football team he is coaching. Their appearance comes to seem more sinister in retrospect, when Strange's nine-year-old star quarterback is shot and killed at an ice cream stand. While Strange hunts for the men who shot the boy, his partner, Terry Quinn, an Irish Catholic ex-cop, gets pulled into an attempt to save a young runaway turned prostitute from a big-time pimp and falls for one of the tough women organizing the rescue. Meanwhile, Strange goes through a rocky period with his longtime lover (and secretary) Janine, forced to consider what his massage-parlor habit is doing to their relationship. The novel's turf the nontourist parts of Washington, D.C., neighborhoods where so many young black children die that selling T-shirts with their pictures on them at their wakes and funerals has become a cottage industry was staked out successfully in Pelecanos's earlier books about the sons and grandsons of Greek immigrants and now is extended to focus chiefly on the District's black majority. It is Pelecanos's intimate understanding of this volatile D.C. and the complexity of Strange a rich, sometimes frustrating but always warmly human character that should keep this series fresh for a long time to come. (Feb. 19) Forecast: Little, Brown is betting $100,000 in marketing dollars (not to mention a 20-city author tour) that this will be the book that propels cult favorite Pelecanos onto the bestseller lists and they may be right. Few writers deserve a boost as much as the hardworking, fearlessly gritty and engagingly idiosyncratic Pelecanos. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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