★ ★ ★ 1/2

My first non-series Pelecanos. The return of a serial killer after twenty years of dormancy brings together three men: a detective and two former cops, one retired, one forced out. Perhaps because of my preference for series characters, I closed this book thinking, Interesting but not great. Yet there is no denying Pelecanos’s brilliance as a writer, particularly with street-level life. His average is still better than most. I’ll end up reading all of his work eventually, series or not.

7/10

This almost turned out to be The Little Friend of Pelecanos books, but much like that one, the pleasure was all in the journey & not in trying to figure out who the night gardener really was or just who was killing those kids with the palindromic names. I left the obsession to the police & sat back & enjoyed the ride. I went about it backwards a bit with this guy, reading his newer stuff first & saving the older for last. I'm retroactively pleased that I did it this way because if you ask me, his older work is where it's at - but here's the depressing part: I think I have two books left to read & then George & I will be parting ways for a bit. I think I'll need Wire marathon to cheer me up when that happens.

OMICIDI PALINDROMI


”L’imbalsamatore” di Matteo Garrone, 2002.

Aveva spalle ampie e squadrate, il viso gradevole, con gli zigomi in parte coperti da lunghe treccine. Gli occhi erano di un marrone intenso ma poco espressivi, l’ideale per un tassidermista.

Mi piace come scrive George Pelacanos.
Le sue crime novel sono diverse: hanno un ritmo andante, che sa prendersi il giusto tempo per costruire atmosfera situazione caratteri, senza fretta senza strappi senza salti.
Mi piace che non usi effetti, men che meno effettacci, che non sprechi il sangue, che risparmi sui pezzetti di cervello fatti saltare in aria da una pallottola.



Mi piace che le sue storie, anche se parlano di droga, crimine, violenza, che non sono tanto la mia quotidianità, sembrino così verosimili, e così credibili.

Mi piace che i suoi personaggi abbiano un’età e la dimostrino, che siano a volte coi fianchi larghi, a volte calvi, a volte bassi, a volte magri allampanati, e non sempre semidei come nei libri di Don Winslow o Jefferson Parker.

Mi piace che tratti le donne come gli uomini, e non con il machismo solito di questo genere di letteratura.

Mi piace che i suoi libri siano tutti ambientati a Washington.



E mi piace la sua insistenza nel descrivere percorsi stradali, toponomastica, architettura urbana, arredamento, modelli di automobili e altri aspetti che potrebbero sembrare marginali.

Mi piace perché il Male nei suoi libri non è sovrumano, diabolico, infernale, ma sembra che abiti nella porta accanto.

Mi piace perché mi sembra diverso, fuori dal coro.

I am a die hard fan of the HBO series The Wire. i have always maintained that that tv show "read" more like a novel than it did a typical tv show. It had characters with depth, there were no good guys and bad guys only people who were varying shades of grey. It had layers and a definite, recognizable signature of style and storytelling.

So it is no surprise that a book by George Pelecanos, a contributing writer for that show, would also showcase many of the things that make the show so compelling.

This story is at once a murder mystery, a police procedural, a set of character studies and a little dash of domestic drama.

The central story of the murder of a teenage boy seems, at first, to be straightforward enough. Years ago, a killer known as the Palindrome Murderer (his victim's names spelled the same forward and back) eluded the police. Now 20 years later, the police wonder if he has returned because the newest murder victim, also discovered in the same way as those other victims, has a name that is spelled the same forward and back.

In the 20 year time, the three cops who were at the scene of the last known palindrome murder have all had very different life trajectories. Seargent Cooke, who headed the investigations at the time, has since retired and spends his days in boring loneliness but still thinks, almost obsessively, about the case he could never solve. Dan "Doc" Holiday was drummed out the of the force and now owns a chauffeur & bodyguard business and sees this at his chance at redemption. And then there is Gus Ramone, a straight arrow who has worked his way up the ranks and who has a very specific interest in the newest murder because the victim is a good friend of his own teen aged son.

What follows is the story of how these three, in their own way, pursue the case and then reconnect. Interspersed in the main story are other moments of police work as well as glimpses into the home life of Gus Ramone, all worked organically into the flow of the narrative. As a whole, there is a lot more going on than just a murder case. There is a lot of story with some excellent secondary and even minor walk-on characters.

Another thing that I really liked about this book is that it is set in DC which has a very large minority population and the writer does not ignore that. I have read books by writers who set their books in large urban areas that have a very sizeable minority population and not a single person in the book is a person of color. What is better is that Pelecanos is very matter of fact about race. It is isn't there to be preached about or obsessed over, it just is. These people all live there. Some comment on it, some describe others by race, some have unconscious prejudices, some don't consciously think about it, but it is there. That is true even of his treatment of Gus and his family life.

One side subplot deals with Gus' determination to make sure his children attend a better school than the on they are supposed to go to. But the school they send the kids to unfortunately racially profiles in a very passive-aggressive way. Gus is married to a black woman so his kids are biracial. He and his wife struggle with the decision whether to keep their son in a school where the classes, teachers and material are better but he and other black students are singled out for minor infractions that are ignored in their white classmates or to send him back to his old school that is in decay but accepts him and where he flourishes. It isn't a heavy handed, bleeding heart subplot, but it does remind me of the excellent season 4 of The Wire where the public education system was a central theme.

I was gratified with how really wonderful a read this was. The story was not predictable, the ending was somewhat surprising to me but was exactly the way it should have ended.

I highly recommend!

This was my first time reading George Pelecanos. This is a cross between Elmore Leonard and Richard Price. It has Leonard’s knack for bold characterization and sharp dialogue combined with Price’s gift for storytelling in an urban setting.

A serial killer, who killed three victims twenty years before has apparently struck again. This brings together a disparate group of characters and storylines. The murder is just a framing device for one of the best novels I’ve read this year. It’s a story that takes unexpected twists and turns. A story that is at times moving, at times violent.

On the cover of this edition of the book, Stephen King says of Pelecanos: “Perhaps the greatest living American Crime Writer”. Mr. King, in this book, Mr. Pelecanos rises above any genre.

I have found my personal literary grail: a worthy fictional successor to David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. When it comes to (East Coast) urban noir, this is the best of the best.

I've been a Pelecanos fan for a long while so I might be biased but I think this might be one of his very best. What started as a slow (and fairly standard) police procedural evolved into something utterly brilliant that delivered a gut punch of an ending that left me reeling and reflective. Highly recommended.

there were parts that were clunky and some of the usual contemporary crime cliches popped up; but the book surprised me more often than not. pelecanos is not content to slip into genre and do what he's supposed to do, but neither does he draw so far outside the lines so as to lose the reader looking for a great and dark crime book... his characterization, dialogue, and tone were top notch -- i fully understand why simon snatched this guy up to write for The Wire.

Although I knew of George P. Pelecanos before I became obsessed with The Wire (where he was a writer/producer), I hadn't really read him. He's typically categorized with Richard Price, who try as I might I just can't read (& no, I'm not really sure why). I think it was this pairing in my mind that made me wait so long to try one of Pelecanos' books, but I'm glad I got around to it.

The Night Gardener is a police procedural set in Washington, DC. There are murders (both old & new) & cops (both old & new) & perps & victim's families & the world that swirls around all of these. The story is a good one with plenty of twists & turns & some genuine surprises as well as some sadness & futility.

Pelecanos excels, however, in the nuances of relationship & the ways that this is expressed through language. What is said & what isn't said & the choices that people make or don't - this is the bright thread that runs throughout the book. I liked the characters & the way the book muses about partners & fathers without being overtly about partnering & fathering in the same way that it is a book about solving crime with that being both central & at the same time somewhat ancillary.

& maybe all of the above is what makes this book interesting. We often write about writers who transcend genre, as if all genre writing is limited & a book must become something else to transcend it. I'm not sure this is a fair assessment in most cases. Dashiel Hammett wrote books that are squarely in their genre, but that doesn't diminish them. The Night Gardener is a book about crime, but it's mostly a book about people - those who commit crime, those impacted by it, those who look for its perpetrators. Pelecanos acknowledges in some unique ways that these people all have lives & relationships that stand outside of the crime & that those elements in their lives are ultimately more important than the single event. I like that thought & I like that he writes that way & I liked this book.

The Palindrome Killer. Victims are young, and their first names are palindromes - spelled the same backwards and forwards. Bodies all violated in the same way, chunks of hair taken from them.

Two young patrol men and the lead sergeant at the scene of one of the murders.

Come forward to present time. One of the young patrolmen left the force before being investigated by the other patrolman who was then Internal Affairs. The old sergeant is retired and has suffered a stroke but isn't totally incapacitated.

And another young man has been discovered shot in a community garden and his name is a palindrome. Is the Palindrome Killer back at work?

There are two things that make George Pelecanos' work stand out: his wonderful ear for dialogue, whether it's cops or gangsters or teenagers doing the talking; and his ability to weave together several subplots and have them all come together in the end without overly stretching credibility.

In this novel, the lead detective is not only trying to solve the murder of a teenager that is eerily similar to a string of unsolved killings more than 20 years before, but the victim was an acquaintance of his son. In the meantime, he has moved his son into a Maryland middle school for a better education, but because his wife is black, their son is treated unfairly at the new school, and he has to struggle with the balance between not letting his son off the hook for discipline problems and not letting the school get away with obvious bias.

Throw into the mix a former cop who has become a chauffeur and now thinks he can help a retired detective solve the old Night Gardener murders, a criminal on the make who steals money from a dealer who is backed by a much more powerful ex-con, and the atmospherics of the cop shop and the lives of those in the homicide bureau, and you have a novel that is way beyond the usual police procedural -- which is what you'd expect from a co-writer of The Wire.

Recommended.