CRIME STORIES

Don’t be afraid of the raised lettering on the book jacket; a well-written crime-fiction novel deserves to be treated as high art. MAGNET’s Andrew Earles surveys the modern landscape of hard-boiled detective stories and tales of noir-colored underworlds Drama City / The Turnaround Why are these two George Pelecanos books saved for last? 2005's Drama City and 2008's The Turnaround don’t dance with my obsessive-compulsive tendency to stuff artistic endeavors in categories based on common denominators. They are by no means weak contenders or conspicuous oddballs. Kindred spirits with The Night Gardener (a book that I happen to be a little more enamored with), these are departures from the crime-fiction norm in much the same way: Drama City (the title slang for Washington, D.C.) and The Turnaround contain crime without abiding by the A-to-B mystery-solving journey. The great yardstick of “going straight” crime fiction is Eddie Bunker’s 1976 novel No Beast So Fierce (adapted to the screen two years later as the Dustin Hoffman vehicle Straight Time). Drama City is a worthy companion piece, with much more going on. For one, don’t expect a dire circumstantial spiral to derail the protagonist (ex-con Lorenzo Brown). There are challenges and the distinct risk of lapsing, though Brown, a Humane Society animal cop, faces danger from outside forces stronger than any internal conflict. The book deals with urban dog fighting, a festering cultural sore so powerfully loathsome that, if dwelled upon, can siphon any hope for basic human decency. The book’s co-star is Brown's probation officer, a walking tragedy and one of Pelecanos’ better character studies. Pelecanos has said that writing a book per year has caused confusion and conflict as to where he’s headed next. 2007 was the first year since 1999 that didn’t have a new Pelecanos title. Who does he think he is? Charles Portis? Pynchon? Fred Exley? Get it together, George! What’s next? Wandering your vast estate in a tattered bathrobe, using your millions to buy up every Mustang II in existence so the roads will no longer be tainted with their presence? Just do like James Patterson: Have your wife draw little shreds of paper out of a whirling PowerBall machine four times a year. “Alex Cross + Homeland Security + Rap Music + New Love Interest – Old Friend = Revenge Fantasy w/ Topicality” Nope, don’t like that one, draw another. “Cross + U.F.O. Kooks + Assassination of ‘Ooga Danktrillian’ (our first black president) + The Reverse of Global Warming + Navy Seals – Old Friend = Bigger Advance if Written in Two Months.” That’s more like it! The Turnaround arrived in 2008 and is based on a real event: a violent—and in one character’s case, fatal—attack that occurred in early '70s. White teenage race-baiting lights the fuse and things go horribly wrong in this partial period piece. Pelecanos constructs a largely fictional back story and subsequent aftermath around the incident. The Turnaround speaks volumes about life after prison, the war in Iraq, race and gentrification without defaulting to self-righteous preaching, even when three out of those four issues are known Pelecanos pet peeves. Pelecanos has edited two short fiction collections, to which he also contributed stories: D.C. Noir (2006, part of Akashic’s fantastic Noir series) and The Best American Mystery Stories 2008. Both are good samplings, as is his contribution to 2003's fantastic Men From Boys, edited by John Harvey. Compared to some contemporaries, Pelecanos has had few short stories published, though there’s no question as to how his fiction is best enjoyed. This concludes our weeklong look at Pelecanos' work. His new book, The Way Home, is due May 12. On Monday, Pelecanos made MAGNET a mix tape; check it out here. In 2001, Pelecanos interviewed ex-Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn for us; read it here. They got along so well that four years later, they wrote a song together ("Cindy It Was Always You," from Wynn's...tick...tick...tick) and also performed once in a live setting, with Wynn providing instrumental backing to Pelecanos reading from 2006's The Night Gardener. (Download "The Night Gardener") [audio:TheNightGardener.mp3]

Don’t be afraid of the raised lettering on the book jacket; a well-written crime-fiction novel deserves to be treated as high art. MAGNET’s Andrew Earles surveys the modern landscape of hard-boiled detective stories and tales of noir-colored underworlds. Right As Rain / Hell To Pay / Soul Circus / Hard Revolution Not to scoop the story of the century or anything, but the P.I. odd couple is nothing new to crime fiction. For decades, writers have used a P.I. to complete or accent another P.I. with no uniform outcome. Examples like Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole/Joe Pike duo and Robert B. Parker’s Spenser/Hawk pairing (started out strong, became a laugh riot) bring to mind the “I have too much of a conscience to throw you into that hay-baler, but my hulking, soulless man-mountain of a partner with his mechanical prosthetic arm doesn’t have the understanding that I do” formula. George Pelecanos' Strange/Quinn partnership is the something the crime-fiction duo so desperately needs: subtlety. Sure, no new ground is broken with the ex-cop with a dubious/troublesome past, but whining about the use of that back story is like criticizing indie rock for being rife with Caucasians. Get used to it. As for Derek Strange, the man exudes confidence. He’s an ex-cop, successful, respected in the community, black, cocksure, smooth, old-fashioned in ways more positive than negative, altruistic and a terminal bachelor by choice (unlike Nick Stefanos). So he likes to visit an Asian jack-shack every once in a while; at least he’s not chasing the delirium tremors with a drink each morning or perpetually hunting for the slang meaning of his surname. So he’s not the stuff of genre reinvention. Show me what is. Pelecanos didn’t set out to turn the crime novel upside down with quirkiness or weird characterization (see Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn for an enjoyable if not semi-precious example); he set out to write a new series and triumphed with a superior gloss on the source material. There is a maturation from the series that preceded this one (the D.C. Quartet), but as Pelecanos has stated in interviews, he was learning his craft in public. Terry Quinn’s past is the crux of 2001's Right As Rain, the introductory novel in the series. Quinn is not the nicest Irish badass in the world, and when he accidentally shoots a black cop, the cleanest acquittal in the world can’t iron out the tensions that await him back on the job, so the uniform gets traded for whatever he feels like wearing in a casual corner of the retail sector. Strange is a perfectionist and somewhat old-fashioned in his private detecting. With a realistic attitude toward youth culture and crime—realistic given his age and demographic—he’s charitable and critical at the same time. Sometimes he’s a little too “Bill Cosby vs. the baggy pants,” though this is balanced with surprising irreverence, restrained verbalizing and infrequent use of visceral options. In essence, he can take care of shit if the issue calls for it, but not without the requisite introspection. Much of Right As Rain is Strange investigating what put his future partner behind the counter at a used bookstore. Strange is the canvas on which Pelecanos tweaks his mastery of the challenged character. The ideals are put to the test; solutions satisfy and disturb at the same time. The next novel, 2002's Hell To Pay, is the finest read of the series. It predicts the Pelecanos of the past three or four years as much as it recalls his previous books. Even so, there is incendiary action and violence, plus some gnarly, often depressing, portrayals of underage prostitution. I couldn’t help but think of writer Andrew Vachss as I read Hell To Pay for the second time, though Strange and Quinn don’t deal with the offending pimp by use of a killer deaf-mute sidekick, elaborate torture device or the demolition of entire buildings. The three interwoven subplots are driven by an examination of modern-day gang activity; Quinn is now working out of Strange’s office and standing on the doormat of domesticity in an uncharacteristically meaningful relationship. 2003's Soul Circus does well by its title. As with 2000's Shame The Devil and 1995's Down By The River Where The Dead Men Go, this series-closer is no barrel of monkeys. Terry Quinn is Mr. On The Verge more so than in the other two books, and the temper, self-destructiveness, catatonic drinking habits (he watches passing trains while getting blasted; sound familiar?) and his pesky past unhinge the man of Right As Rain and Hell To Pay. The plot of Soul Circus is even more gang-centric than that of Hell To Pay, believe it or not. Presenting Strange first as a pre-teen in 1959, then as a rookie cop in 1968 having to deal with one of the worst long-form law-enforcement (and societal) nightmares of the 20th century, 2004's Hard Revolution is an abrasive look at the first instance in modern times that Americans believed the world was ending. The combined awfulness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, the ’68 race riots, another Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War? Poor economy, schmoor economy. More than 120 U.S. cities experienced rioting as a direct effect of King’s assassination, but along with Louisville, Chicago and Baltimore, D.C. was one of the worst. I came away from Hard Revolution with a newfound appreciation for what other cities had to cope with as a result of something that took place less than five miles from my home in Memphis. The group of disparate kids and teenagers introduced in the first few chapters of Hard Revolution return, for the most part, in 1968 with a high ratio of damaged goods. The only Pelecanos work to approach a Vietnam novel, Hard Revolution is recent cultural and societal bleakness in its infancy. That’s why the book’s early chapters are a cursory look at 1959; there is a distinct then-and-now boundary in the sand with 1968. Many of the problems faced in Pelecanos novels set in post-Vietnam times can be traced back to that year. After following him as a green, African-American cop buried under the riots, readers will have a heightened respect for the Derek Strange of Right As Rain, Hell To Pay and Soul Circus. Tomorrow's installment: Pelecanos' Shoedog and The Night Gardener. On Monday, Pelecanos made MAGNET a mix tape; check it out here. In 2001, Pelecanos interviewed ex-Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn for us; read it here. They got along so well that four years later, they wrote a song together ("Cindy It Was Always You," from Wynn's...tick...tick...tick) and also performed once in a live setting, with Wynn providing instrumental backing to Pelecanos reading from 2006's The Night Gardener. (Download "The Night Gardener") [audio:TheNightGardener.mp3]

Don’t be afraid of the raised lettering on the book jacket; a well-written crime-fiction novel deserves to be treated as high art. MAGNET’s Andrew Earles surveys the modern landscape of hard-boiled detective stories and tales of noir-colored underworlds. The Big Blowdown / King Suckerman / The Sweet Forever / Shame The Devil An excellent primer, this series is what I invariably recommend when asked what George Pelecanos material novices should read first. Four books published between 1996 and 2000 known as "the D.C. Quartet" mark Pelecanos’ transformation from a critically respected underground force to a beacon shining through the sometimes daunting and undeniably cluttered realm of mass-market crime fiction. Despite serial rules or what others may see as logic, 1996's The Big Blowdown can be read before, after or simultaneously with 1997's King Suckerman, 1998's The Sweet Forever and 2000's Shame The Devil. The Big Blowdown, set in the 1940s, is a prequel to the Suckerman/Sweet/Shame trilogy (1970s–1990s), which should not be read out of order. The Marcus Clay/Dimitri Karras saga is magnetic, full of heart, funny and, in terms of pop-culture references, well, it depends on who you ask. The detailed accounts of what characters listen to, watch, wear, drive and read are seen by some as Pelecanos boasting of his formidable frame of reference. I seriously doubt the author cares about the public’s perception of his record collection. At first, the references are a little jarring and seem unnecessary, but screw the ninnies; I want to know everything about a character’s chosen automobile, record/book collection, clothes and taste in film. These qualities frequently say more about a character than what comes out of his or her mouth, and I challenge readers to find another crime writer before Pelecanos who gave, say, '80s post-punk/hardcore and record-collecting culture such an attractive voice. Using music as the perfect example, many readers fail to understand that artists now believed to be underground concerns were more populist interests in the '70s. Listening to Captain Beefheart wasn’t the tastemaking badge it is today; it was a destination for many people who cared about rock music. Great funk was more of a pop-music soundtrack to African-American culture; decades since have transformed it into elitist DJ capital. Pelecanos gets away clear from charges of plot accessorizing, whereas other writers' work can read like a thrift shop, used record store or local Saturday-afternoon TV schedule vomited all over their books. In King Suckerman, the black Marcus Clay and Greek Dimitri Karras are living out their 20s in that largely stress-free, good-times agenda supported by record-store gigs and small-time pot transactions, before real life or serious trouble comes calling. The latter is stumbled upon in King Suckerman (they accidentally run afoul of a murderous drug dealer); the former is somewhat of a backdrop in The Sweet Forever and Shame The Devil. Pelecanos’ confident, engrossing treatment of the “amateur detective” crime-fiction sub-genre is part of what makes these books so appealing. Clay and Karras fall victim to curiosity, nerve, tenacity and, later, personal crusades while trying to live life like normal guys. This is good when (licensed) detective crime fiction can be a little jarring for newbies unwilling or unable to suspend enough disbelief so the logic of “He’d be arrested or dead by this point!” doesn’t prohibit the enjoyment. At the risk of never living down this statement, King Suckerman made me aware of how I carried myself. Literally speaking, it made me want to walk differently. These characters exude balls and moxie as much as they do conflict and bad decisions. To pull this off without an overwhelming silliness or masculinity is no small miracle within Pelecanos’ chosen genre. In each book, the outcomes are never 100-percent positive. In many ways, these stories end at uglier places and certainly with more long-term nastiness than the succession of wrong turns that brought the stories to that point. Which brings me to the violence. Eight years after reading the book, I still think about a certain car-accident scene in King Suckerman. Pelecanos writes violence like no other. He avoids gratuitous splatter; the mind-shattering pain is palpable and very ugly. Understated and disturbing, the violence in these books is a fact of life rather than a focal point or distraction. My implication is not that these are unrelenting bloodbaths clinging tenuously to a storyline. It’s the other way around. The Sweet Forever is set in the '80s and ramps up the music and sports backdrops with Clay as a record-store owner and March Madness as a seasonal time stamp. The depiction of college-hoops star Len Bias’ fatal on-court collapse by way of a cocaine miscalculation is unforgettable as played through character reaction. A sweeping quality of The Sweet Forever is the widening gap between Clay and Karras, the basic theme being responsibility or the lack thereof. Shame The Devil is a dismal conclusion to the D.C. Quartet. The series ends in a maximizing variation of how each individual novel closes: Things will not be OK. Pelecanos never goes out of his way to impress this point; his style is natural, understandable and believable as opposed to transgressional. The Big Blowdown is true '40s period noir, an unapologetic tribute to the classic crime fiction that played a big part in Pelecanos’ decision to write novels. The book's protagonist is Karras’ father. Readers should never underestimate what it takes to pull off a novel set in a time before the author’s birth. Pelecanos knocks it out of the park. The Big Blowdown is like dialed-down James Ellroy minus the overblown “daddy-o” nature; readers won’t be constantly checking to make sure they’re holding a novel and not a text titled The Mid-Century Scumbag Lexicon. (I made that book up.) Tomorrow's installment: Pelecanos’ first series, known as "the Nick Stefanos Trilogy." While definitely unlike the D.C. Quartet, the Stefanos Trilogy is no less infectious. And with Stefanos a recurring and frequently vital character in the D.C. Quartet, it’s up to the reader to determine which series to read first. Yesterday, Pelecanos made MAGNET a mix tape; check it out here. In 2001, Pelecanos interviewed ex-Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn for us; read it here. They got along so well that four years later, they wrote a song together ("Cindy It Was Always You," from Wynn's...tick...tick...tick) and also performed once in a live setting, with Wynn providing instrumental backing to Pelecanos reading from 2006's The Night Gardener. (Download "The Night Gardener") [audio:TheNightGardener.mp3]