The Big Blowdown - Softcover

Pelecanos, George

4.03

2,765 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852427388 ISBN 13: 9781852427382

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2001

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Washington DC, 1946. For two local young men, Pete Karras and Joey Recevo, the easiest way to find work after the war is by providing a little muscle for a local boss who runs a protection racket with the Mafia. The trouble with Pete Karras is that he is just too soft on his fellow immigrants, and the last thing the boss wants is for his mob to get soft. The boys have to teach Karras a painful lesson that he won?t forget. Three years later Pete and Joey meet up once more and a final confrontation puts the meaning of friendship and honour to the ultimate test. The Big Blowdown is the first novel in Pelecanos?s acclaimed ?Washington Quartet?.

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Review:

In the quartet of novels about life in Washington DC of which The Big Blowdown is chronologically the first, George Pelecanos intelligently breaks down the thin barriers between the noir thriller and the character-driven novel of embattled masculinity. In the 1930s, Pete Karras and Joey Recevo are friends, backing each other up in street fights round the projects. Both go to war and come back changed; Joey is capable of buying into the criminal subculture and cutting adrift from community and Pete, almost fatally, isn't. He ends up betrayed and crippled and, more than ever, obsessed with doing the right thing himself and making Joey do right again... The observation here of small immigrant subcultures, and different kinds of honour, and the getting of wisdom about things as disparate as a good sharp knife for cooking and killing and the purer sorts of jazz, is stunning. He knows what people are doing whether they are Greek cooks learning about African-American food or cops chasing a serial killer. Above all, though, this is a novel about flawed people making bad choices and worse ones; Pelecanos's sense of place and period is always in the service of his subtle grasp of psychology and his passionate moral commitment. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

?Pelecanos has enormous strengths as a crime writer. He can?t write a dull sentence, his dialogue has great rhythm, his action scenes are ferociously effective? Observer ?Pelecanos has joined James Lee Burke and Lawrence Block at the high table of contemporary crime greats? The Times ?Stands head and shoulders above the output of better known writers. Superb? Independent on Sunday

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