Drama City - Softcover

Pelecanos, George P.

3.76

2,736 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446611441 ISBN 13: 9780446611442

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 2006

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Hoping to start over after serving eight years in prison, Lorenzo Brown returns to the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of his youth to take a job as a Humane Society officer but finds challenges from a local drug boss and former acquaintances who would draw him back into his old world. Reprint.

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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)

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