Items related to Soul Circus
Synopsis
In the midst of a brutal courtroom battle during which a Washington, D.C. crime overlord faces the death penalty and his rivals vie for his territory, private investigator Derek Strange struggles to protect the life of a witness.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
With Soul Circus, George Pelecanos brings his sequence of novels about black Washington private eye Derek Strange and his partner Terry Quinn to the late 1990s and some sort of closure. The city they grew up in has changed but, as Strange continues to point out to the angry white Quinn, not as much as all that. It is just that asking the wrong question in the wrong tone of voice can be more dangerous when young men have guns and drug-fuelled short tempers. Young gangsters such as Strange's client Oliver have poisoned their own communities with heroin, crack and an equally addictive cult of machismo. Strange's work for Oliver is sparked by opposition to the death penalty, even for a creature like him.
Even more than usual with Pelecanos, this is a thriller with an agenda--we watch close-up how the availability of semi-legal guns becomes the occasion for a sequence of bloody deaths. This is an intelligent, wistful book that tries to understand violence as much as to condemn it. Strange has become one of the most interesting detectives in modern crime fiction simply because his conscience, his sense of history and his love of sweet soul music are so tightly intertwined. --Roz Kaveney
Review
Pelecanos once again exposes the rotten underbelly of Washington's streets, ravaged by the crime caused by drug gangs... Pelecanos masterfully shows up 'bling-bling' as the ignored, indignant soul displaying itself in a theatre of violence. (THE OBSERVER)
Pelecanos expertly marshals a cast of hundreds ... this is contemporary American crime fiction at its best. (DAILY TELEGRAPH)
Hard-boiled, latter-day, noir detective fiction doesn't get much better than this. (HOT STARS)
The third of Pelecanos's Strange and Quinn novels effectively combines noir thriller with urban realism. (SUNDAY TIMES)
Strange is an attractively quixotic figure and one of the best serial heroes around, but what really lifts Pelecanos into the first rant is his understanding of the criminal mind and his grasp of the realities of life on the wrong side of the tracks. (MAIL ON SUNDAY)
There's a relentless, hard-edged grimness permeating this highly effective crime thriller. (GOOD BOOK GUIDE)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherChivers Large print (Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & C
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0754019942
- ISBN 13 9780754019947
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages522
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want
