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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
George P. Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. on February 18, 1957. Before becoming an author, he worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman's shoe salesman. His first novel, A Firing Offense, was published in 1992. His other books include Nick's Trip, Shoedog, King Suckerman, Right as Rain, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, and What It Was. He has received numerous awards including the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir in France. Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.
He has served as producer on the feature films Caught (1996), Whatever (1998) and BlackMale (1999). He was a producer, writer, and story editor for the HBO series, The Wire, which won the Peabody Award and the AFI Award. He was also a writer and co-producer on the HBO World War II miniseries The Pacific and an executive producer and writer on the HBO series Treme.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pelecanos's later fiction, set on the drug-saturated streets of ghetto Washington, D.C., is charged with the dark, unrelenting inevitability of Greek myth. In the author's 13th novel, "dog man" Lorenzo Brown, a street investigator for the Humane Society, has recently completed an eight-year stretch in prison for narcotics and is determined to stay clean and free. Rachel Lopez, Lorenzo's parole officer, spends her days chasing down clients and her nights getting drunk in bars and having rough sex with strangers. The ignition point for the violence that eventually engulfs these two fully realized, attractive characters-characteristics that in Pelecanos's world mark them as quite probably doomed-is a minor argument between local drug kingpins that inflates into a series of revenge killings. Pelecanos is known for his bleak, uncompromising outlook (Hard Resolution; Hell to Pay; The Sweet Forever) and while the death and destruction are still here in full force, some fans may question the turnaround in his ending. Might it be an attempt to hit the megabestseller stardom that fans think he deserves? Hope and redemption are fine subjects for many novelists, but it's the stark world of violence and despair that this author really owns. Agent, Sloan Harris at ICM. 7-city author tour. (Mar. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Pelecanos continues to expand the parameters of crime fiction by focusing not on a particular crime or, in this case, not even on a particular crime solver. His real subject is the streets themselves: the nature of daily life in an American inner city--the potent mixture of resolve, weakness, violence, and love that percolates in Washington, D.C.'s roughest neighborhoods, where obstacles far outnumber opportunities. Lorenzo Brown, an ex-con determined to stay straight, works for the Humane Society, rescuing abused animals. Rachel Lopez, Brown's probation officer, works the same streets, tracking her offenders and encouraging them to avoid further offenses. Employing a kind of days-in-the-lives narrative strategy, Pelecanos follows Brown and Lopez on their daily rounds as they intersect in different ways with members of two rival drug gangs. Inevitably, the gang and straight worlds collide, forcing Brown to choose between his need for revenge and his commitment to a new life. What Pelecanos does best is to expose the vulnerabilities of his characters, the parts of themselves they hide from the world. It might be Lopez, asserting control over men in bars to mask the lack of control she feels on the streets, or it might be a gang soldier dreaming of seeing Paris (All's he needed was one of them passports, buy a plane ticket, and go. But how did you get a passport? How did you buy a plane ticket? ). Though set on the same streets as Pelecanos' earlier books, this novel works on a smaller scale, lingering on the everyday, the smiling faces and sad, all kinds of faces in between. It's not a view we see much in genre fiction, making it all the more welcome. --Bill Ott Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Pelecanos takes a break from the continuing sagas of DC cop Derek Strange (Hard Revolution, 2003, etc.) and DC private eye Nick Stefanos (Shame the Devil, 2000, etc.) for an equally unsparing stand-alone tale of two cops who aren't quite cops. Lorenzo Brown, released from prison after eight years for selling drugs and refusing to rat out his friend and colleague Nigel Johnson, patrols the mean streets of Washington on behalf of the Humane Society; Rachel Lopez is the parole officer who approvingly watches over his attempts to stay on the straight and narrow. By day, Lorenzo, who's no saint, but a man fighting to rise above his hellish past, hands out citations for animal abuse, impounds mistreated and often dangerous dogs ("You all right" is his gentle mantra to his canine clients), and does what he can to ease the last days of animals who've become literally irredeemable. By night, Rachel, frustrated beyond endurance by her inability to control her human clients or the system she works for, changes into come-hither lingerie and trolls hotel bars for men who won't get out of hand with her. All goes well, more or less, even though the usual richly detailed network of drug buys, dogfights, and sweetheart deals between the Law and the lawless is festering in the background--until one of Nigel's knucklehead enforcers makes a tiny little mistake concerning turf boundaries, touching off a cycle of violence that will sweep though the neighborhood with shocking swiftness and leave both Lorenzo and Rachel scarred. The dog-eat-dog metaphor, borrowed perhaps from the film Amores Perros, provides a brutal, tender new way for Pelecanos to get at his great subject: the miraculous survival of lilies among the toxic weeds of the Nation's Capital. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
After serving eight years for a drug rap, Lorenzo Brown is trying to live a straight life. Working as a Humane Society officer in Washington, DC, doesn't provide the life of wealth that Lorenzo had enjoyed as part of the drug game, but he's doing okay. His parole officer, Rachel Lopez, is fighting her own battle against a tough past and reckless behavior. A violent act committed by a character from Lorenzo's old life places both Lorenzo and Rachel in jeopardy. Now, Lorenzo must decide whether to risk his second chance at a straight life for a shot at vengeance. Pelecanos's writing is intelligent and engaging, and the characters of Lorenzo and Rachel are well formed and all too believable. More than a simple drama, this is an excellent look at the choices people make and the consequences of those choices. Not as dark as many of his previous works (Soul Circus; Hell To Pay), this standalone effort nonetheless shows why Pelecanos is among the best currently writing in any genre. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/04.]-Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Oxford, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
