Drama City - Hardcover

Pelecanos, George P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316608211 ISBN 13: 9780316608213

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 2005

Synopsis

Lorenzo Brown just wants to stay straight. After eight years in prison on a drug charge, he's come "uptown"-back to the Washington, DC neighborhood where he grew up, where his old cohorts still work their corners and their angles, trying to get ahead and stay alive. But Lorenzo's had enough of the life: Now he has a job as a Humane Society officer, policing animal abusers and protecting the abused. In the dangerous streets he used to menace, Lorenzo plays a part in maintain- ing order-and it's a role reversal some of his former friends don't appreciate. Rachel Lopez, Lorenzo's parole officer, tries to help him, even as she battles her own demons and excesses. Trying to stay one step ahead of her troubled past is a daily struggle. It looks like they both might make it, until a malevolent young killer, working for the powerful local drug boss, changes everything with one violent act. Now Lorenzo finds himself caught between the light and dark sides of the street, struggling to stay legit-or throw everything away to exact revenge.

About this title

Review:

Drama City is one of the least gloom-laden of George Pelecanos' excellent thrillers about the underside of Washington DC, not because it lacks his usual high-energy scenes of mayhem and betrayal, but because, for once, there are some vestiges of hope left here. Lorenzo was a gang-banger and went to jail for crimes less serious than some he had committed--now he works as an enforcer for the Humane Society, busting people who mistreat their dogs, and he has genuinely got his life back on track. Rachel Lopez is his probation officer, a good and conscientious public servant, and an alcoholic whose personal life is spinning out of control. Lorenzo's friend Nigel is still in the life--a dealer in drugs and violence; yet even he gets a chance to do the right thing and takes it. This panoramic view of slums and drug dens and dog-fighting pits is as thoroughly peopled as Pelecanos' other books, and makes us invest in those people even more seriously than ever before. This is thriller as social comment and spectacularly intelligent about precisely why drugs still have a hold on people without hope. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

'Top-rate literary crime writer' (THE BOOKSELLER)

'Once again, Pelecanos treads the Washington DC soft shoe shuffle with assurance and pathos. Despairing characters flit across the drug saturated streets of the US capital in a wonderful, if tragic, waltz of despair. ... Pelecanos's view of life has always been bleak and this is no exception, but he displays such a ferocious understanding of street reality and an empathy for America's downtrodden that his books transcend their pulp origin. ... Savour while you can.' (Maxim Jakubowski THE GUARDIAN)

'Few American thirller writers can evoke the jagged rhythms of ghetto life as does George Pelecanos ... un-put-downable.' (Myles McWeeney IRISH INDEPENDENT)

'This had me ducking behind the covers.' (THE MIRROR)

'If you want journalistic realism about inner-city life, not lurid and twisty storytelling, he's your man.' (SUNDAY TIMES)

'...not a conventional thriller. There is no detective, no mystery to solve; it is a novel about crime, its perpetrators and its victims. The picture of life in a Washington DC black ghetto is vivid and harrowing.' (Susanna Yager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0316608211
• ISBN 13: 9780316608213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 293