Shoedog

by George Pelecanos

Overview

From "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world" (Esquire) comes this powerful early novel--the noirish story of how a Washington, D.C., liquor store heist shows a drifter named Constantine what it means to be a shoedog.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316285001
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	09/17/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	967,851
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

George Pelecanos is the bestselling author of twenty novels set in and around Washington, D.C. He is also an independent film producer, and a producer and Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO series The Wire, Treme, and The Deuce. He lives in Maryland.

Hometown:

Silver Spring, Maryland

Date of Birth:

February 18, 1957

Place of Birth:

Washington, D.C.

Education:

B.A., University of Maryland at College Park, 1980

Website:

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/

Editorial Reviews

Sixty years ago, in The Postman Always Rings Twice , James M. Cain established the drifter as a dark knight of American crime fiction. Pelecanos ( Nick's Trip ) continues that tradition here, following Constantine, an enigmatic wanderer who falls into a den of thieves and disproves the adage that there's no honor among them. Hitchhiking south from Maryland to nowhere, Constantine takes a lift from an old man who stops at a country mansion to get some money. There Grimes, an equally old but wealthy man who organizes heists as a hobby, invites the pair to help rob two D.C. liquor stores. Swayed by ``the Beat'' (``the Beat was knowing that he was into something wrong, and the fear of it, and the point when the fear was no longer there. It was a hot buzz . . .''), Constantine signs on as a driver. He and his colleagues, who are all being blackmailed by Grimes, drink, plan and pick up women, with Constantine dangerously zeroing in on Grimes's young lover (``there was a freshness in her like newly printed money''). The robberies themselves, marred by a doublecross, go down fast and bad, leading Constantine to avenge his fallen partners by taking justice into his own hands. All sinners, none saints, the small-time hoods in this authentic world are crisply limned here in their fallible humanity. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Constantine is a burned-out, jive-loving, booze-guzzling, sex-junkie, chain-smoking, longhaired druggie loner who's searching for something he'll never find. Leaving his Washington, D.C., home at age 17, Constantine has circled the globe, traveling light, sleeping in fleabags and flophouses, working every kind of odd job from slinging hash to cleaning toilets. Back in the U.S. after years of roaming, Constantine hitches a ride with Polk, an old geezer headed for Florida. But there's one stop Polk needs to make, and it turns out to be a stop that changes Constantine's life forever. Grimes, an old army buddy of Polk's, offers the two men big bucks if they'll rob a liquor store--an easy, quick, in-and-out holdup. But things go badly wrong, and in the aftermath of the violence come tragedy and death. In the best tradition of hard-boiled fiction, Pelecanos' haunting, gritty story works its way deep into his readers' collective psyches, simultaneously shocking, attracting, and repelling us with its unvarnished, unbeautiful realism and its explosive, stomach-churning violence. An exceptional, memorable book from a fine writer who is also the author of the equally impressive Nick Stefanos series, which includes "Nick's Trip".

Emily Melton

From early in the Pelecanos oeuvre comes this classic noir story of a drifter, a setup, and a double cross. Dan Woren’s resonant voice ranges from seductive to menacing as the drifter, Constantine, makes all the wrong choices. Despite being warned off by his new partners, Constantine is drawn like a moth to flame to an upcoming heist and to the boss’s much younger lover. The story is filled with references to muscle cars and ‘70’s music as the inevitable double cross unfolds, followed by Constantine’s retribution. One scene mars the otherwise excellent performance with several stereotypical characterizations. But overall, Woren plays the staccato sentence rhythms to their advantage, driving the story to its resolution. M.L.R. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2013 - AudioFile