George Pelecanos at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 09/07/2007

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George Pelecanos - Page 1

24 Aug 07

Tangled Web Interview

About the Author

Bibliography

Hardback
Orion (2007)

The Night Gardener
They never found the killer.
All they knew, back in the winter of 1985, was that someone was taking teenagers, killing them and leaving their abused bodies in public parks. Three victims in all, with no link between them except an oddity of their names. They read the same back-to-front - Otto, Ava and lastly Eve.
A lot has happened in the twenty years since Detectives Gus Ramone and Dan Holiday - two of the junior cops on the case - have pursued very different paths. Gus has climbed to the heights of Detective Sergeant and built himself a reputation as a good solid officer, whilst Dan has been drummed out of the force - his repeated sleaze finally getting too much for his bosses. However, their paths are about to cross again. A boy named Asa - a friend of Gus’s teenage son - has been found in the public park, his skull shattered by close-range gunfire. Now it seems that both men are once again in the path of this disturbed serial killer.
The Night Gardener is George Pelecanos’s stunning new crime thriller – the story of two very different men united by their desire to save themselves and their own.
‘His books will burn into your brain like no others’ Washington Post
`For some time George Pelecanos has been the best-kept secret in crime fiction - maybe all fiction.’ Michael Connelly
'One of the best crime novelists alive' Dennis Lehane
`Pelecanos has carved out a territory - the seedier suburbs of Washington, DC - and a language of danger and sadness all his own.’ Chicago Tribune
`A consummate stylist with a rare sense of contemporary slam-bang and angst.’ Time Out

First British Edition Orion (2004)

Hard Revolution
In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King preaches in vain for non-violent protest against the US government; the world is enthralled but the new black communities of Washington, DC still seethe with anger against the iniquities of their society.
Derek Strange has witnessed the white establishment crush his mother, father, and friends their entire lives. Yet, barely out of school, Derek chooses to become a rookie cop in a police-force run by those he despises. Can one young man possibly make a difference? Derek believes that he can, but many of his own kind feel that he’s a traitor. Meanwhile his older brother, Dennis, has recently returned from a stint in the military, and with no job and no prospect of getting one, is drifting towards drugs and deadly alliances. And in another part of the city, a group of young men, twisted with racial hate, thrill-kill a young black man and plan a shotgun robbery that will have devastating implications for Derek, his partner Troy Peters, and Vaughn, a hard homicide investigator with ties to the Strange family.
Then, on April 4th, 1968, Dr King is assassinated on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. And the black nation rises as one to condemn the slaying of one of their prophets. For one week, it seems that the whole country will fall into the abyss. Derek, his family, and his whole community find themselves in the midst of a battle for the heart and soul of this new world as the violent side of the civil rights movement comes upon America in a volcanic fury.
Hard Revolution is the new epic novel from one of America’s most powerful crime writers, a story of one young man’s journey into the fires of a revolution.

Paperback - Orion (2004)

Soul Circus
P I Derek Strange is trying to prevent a man he despises from paying the ultimate penalty for his crimes ...
Granville Oliver, drug lord and murder one suspect faces the death penalty, but Strange doesn’t believe in `a death for a death’- even for a man such as Oliver. But then, unbeknownst to Strange, he and his partner, Terry Quinn, become the agents of another death. A client brutally murders a young girl they had been paid to find. They took the money and now they have to take the consequences.
`Powerful and moving’ Sunday Telegraph
`A teeming, brilliant book ... George P is just about unbeatable, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary crime fiction, and a great writer in any genre ... This is another tremendous book by a modern master of American crime writing’ Uncut

First British Edition Orion (2002)

Hell to Pay
See Review by Bob Cornwell
No one would choose to live in the underbelly of Washington DC, but this is private investigator Derek Strange’s world. Along with his partner, Terry Quinn, he witnesses the worst that the city has to offer - the runaways, the teenage hookers and, of course, the drugs. Just a few miles from the White House is the ultimate have and have-not nightmare.
But one more senseless death on a sunny afternoon in the city shakes even Derek Strange’s existence. A victim shot down by bullets meant for another. A tragic accident that strikes just too close to home. Strange’s grief is all consuming and he swears to track down and destroy the killers - ghetto style. But as he throws himself deeper and deeper into the hunt, he has to ask questions of himself and his world that he would rather not.
Hell To Pay is the epic new masterpiece from one of the most talented crime authors around. Dark, powerful and moving, it marks Pelecanos as one of the finest crime novelists of his time and a supreme chronicler of modern American life.
Praise for George Pelecanos and Right as Rain
‘One of the best crime writers alive’ Dennis Lehane
‘A terrific book, full of characters I wish I had thought of’ Elmore Leonard
‘Right As Rain is flat-out the best PI novel I’ve read this year – a massively entertaining, high-octane page-turner from George Pelecanos, one of our best writers’ Harlan Coben

Paperback - Orion (2001)

First British Edition Orion (2001)

Right as Rain
See Review by Cath Staincliffe - Author of the highly acclaimed Sal Kilkenny Mysteries set on the Mean Streets of Manchester
Shortlisted for the CWA Macallan Gold Dagger 2001
Derek Strange and Terry Quinn are ex-cops turned private detectives in Washington D.C. Hired to investigate the death of an off-duty black police officer at the hands of a white policeman, Strange and Quinn are faced with the institutionalised racism of the nation’s most poorly trained and dangerous police force. They must also confront the degradation of the city’s flourishing drug trade, and find themselves up against the most implacable, deadeyed killers . . .
‘An outstanding example of American crime writing’ Sunday Telegraph
‘This is a wonderful book ... written with an acute understanding of human frailties’ Guardian
‘A big novel by a major writer’ Literary Review
‘This is an evocative, intelligently written novel, and Pelecanos - master of the knowing urban thriller - never takes his finger off the throttle for a second’ Time Out
‘A tense, exciting, cleverly plotted thriller… with every book he gets better and better’ Daily Express
'Pelecanos is a literary Tarantino with added heart' Mail on Sunday
'Makes Jim Thompson look like Barbara Cartland' Mirabella

About The Author
George P. Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, shoe salesman, electronics salesman, and construction worker before publishing his first novel in 1992.
George Pelecanos is the author of twelve crime/noir novels set in and around Washington, DC: A Firing Offense, Nick’s Trip, Shoedog, Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman (shortlisted for the 1998 Crime Writers' Association Golden Dagger Award), The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain and Hell to Pay (recipient of the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Award). The Big Blowdown was the recipient of the International Crime Novel of the Year award in France, Germany, and Japan. His short fiction has-appeared in Esquire and the collections Unusual Suspects and Best American Mystery Stories of 1997. He is an award-winning journalist and pop-culture essayist who has written for The Washington Post, GQ, and numerous other publications. Esquire magazine called Pelecanos `the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world.’
George Pelecanos served as producer on the feature films Caught (1996), Whatever (1998) and Blackmale (1999). He was the U.S. distributor of John Woo’s cult classic, The Killer. As a screenwriter, he has written an -adaptation of King Suckerman for Dimension Films, and was co-writer on the recently completed feature Paid in Full, also for Dimension. Most recently, he has written a script based on a team in the American Basketball Association, The Spirits of St. Louis, for HBO Films.
George Pelecanos lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and three children. . He is at work on his next novel. Pelecanos is a staff writer and story editor for the HBO dramatic series, The Wire. His novel Right as Rain is currently in development with director Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, Wonder Boys) and Warner Brothers.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

The Night Gardener (Orion, 2007) Aug 07

Hard Revolution (Orion, 2004)

Soul Circus (Orion, 2003) Feb 03 Orion Pbk Jan 04

Hell to Pay (Orion, 2002) (Derek Strange)

Right as Rain (Orion, 2001) Gollancz Dec 00 Orion Pbk Oct 01 (Derek Strange)

Shoedog (Serpents Tail Pbk, 2001)

Shame the Devil (Gollancz, 2000) Gollancz Pbk Jan 00

The Big Blowdown (Serpents Tail Pbk, 2000)

The Sweet Forever (Serpents Tail Pbk, 1999)

Nick's Trip (Serpents Tail Pbk, 1998)

King Suckerman (Serpents Tail Pbk, 1998) (Nick Stefanos)

A Firing Offense (Serpents Tail Pbk, 1997) (Nick Stefanos)

Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (Serpents Tail Pbk, 1996) (Nick Stefanos)