He is among the finest ten or twelve novelists working in the U.S. today. . . . [a] Balzacian figure so intent upon rendering this nation's whole ramshackle, impossible urban life over the past half-century.” —James Sallis, from his introduction Publishers Weekly [starred review] Les Whitten, Washington Post Book World
After several well-received Nick Stefanos crime novels, (A Firing Offense; Nick's Trip; Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go), Pelecanos goes for broke with a gangster epic that chronicles 25 turbulent years of immigrant life in post-WWII Washington, D.C. He rises above the in-built predictability of the material to unleash a charged page-turner liberally doused with sex, death and irony. Pete Karras might be a confirmed skirt-chaser, but he's way too soft on the guys he's being paid to shake down. As a penalty for shirking his duty, he gets his legs broken and ends up limping through the streets he loves, working the counter of a diner owned by Nick Stefanos (the father, presumably, of the Nick who stars in Pelecanos's earlier books). When a kid shows up looking for a lost sister who's addicted to heroin and whoring to support her habit, Pete finds himself a cause. Whores, especially well-stacked ones, are being slit open in the city, and Karras's childhood pal, Jimmy Boyle, now a beat cop, is anxious for a collar. Joey Recevo, who grew up on the streets with Karras and Boyle, is still a shakedown artist, and now his next target is Nick's place. There isn't much in the plot that truthfully surprises, but the tale of these three friends and how their loyalties are tested is feverishly alive. Pelecanos lovingly recreates old Washington with small details about soft-drink brands, finned cars and cherished smokes. The ending is a haze of gunsmoke that drifts away to leave a mixed tableau of heroism and futility. With stylistic panache and forceful conviction, Pelecanos delivers a darkly powerful story of the American city. (May)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Set in Washington, D.C., from the 1930s to the 1950s, Pelecanos's (Shoedog, St. Martin's, 1994) latest novel traces a group of boyhood friends as they make their way in the richly detailed Greek and Italian neighborhoods of the city. Peter Karras, a Greek, and his friend Joe Recevo, an Italian, grow up together, serve separately in World War II, and reunite for a time after the war as Joe becomes involved in organized crime in the city. Peter cannot stomach the practice of shaking down immigrants for loan vigorish and is brutally cast out by the gangsters, as Joe stands by. The two friends will inevitably cross paths again. Pelecanos's plotting is superb, as is his use of dialog and sense of place. Innumerable details that are brought in to the story turn out to be essential plot elements further down the line, so that the entire book seems to have been conceived as a unified thought. A fine achievement; recommended for all fiction collections.-David Dodd, Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Pelecanos follows four mysteries—three about D.C. appliance salesman/barman Nick Stefanos (Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, 1995, etc.)—with this crossover prequel showing the warmly seamy side of Nick's Grill back in 1949.
Though Nick's Grill provides the turf his heroes can battle over, Nick himself takes a backseat to three even scrappier types. There's Joe Recevo, a bagman for a suave, brutal boss named Burke (a Richard Conte role). There's Peter Karras, Recevo's childhood friend, who followed him into Burke's gang but got carried out on Burke-crippled legs when he drew the line at shaking down an old friend of Karras's hated father. And there's Michael Florek, an innocent who's climbed down from the Pennsylvania hills in search of his sister Lola, a hophead whore now spreading her legs in the nation's capital as a nightmare john stalks the fringes of the story cutting up prostitutes—without causing Karras's friend Jimmy Boyle, a D.C. cop so hot for his gold shield that he's getting hooked on uppers, a single sleepless night. Pelecanos fills his bars with hot, smoky music and his streets with colorful lowlifes, but he lingers so lovingly over the tough childhood memories Karras and Recevo share, their wartime traumas, and their present affairs—even though Karras is respectably married to his first love, he can't keep his hands off census taker Vera Gardner, who worries all the time about the Bomb—that you can tell early on where this story is heading: toward a showdown over Nick's, when Burke picks his place to lead the block in paying protection money, and Nick digs in his heels, and Karras and Recevo face off one last time.
A workmanlike, atmospheric retro noir—Once Upon a Time in America meets The Big Combo. If it's not quite as original or resonant as the Big Book Pelecanos seems to have had in mind, you'll still find yourself feeling everything you're supposed to about the familiar demi-heroic types and their grim postwar world.
