Its Pelecanos. Enough said.

This is one of the books that thrust Pelecanos into the national spotlight, and it's easy to see why. He crafts a compelling plot (is a fresh homicide the return of a serial killer from years ago?) in the tough streets of Washington, D.C., in which the setting is as much of a character as any of the people who inhabit them.

They've all got motives and back stories and goals and dreams. When you think the story is going one direction, Pelecanos throws in twists that feel organic rather than contrived. No character feels like a throw-away. They all have a part to play in the saga.

I love the richness of detail Pelecanos provides the reader. There's almost a world-weary perspective to the writing in the sense that we're hearing from someone who knows these streets and these people like the back of his hand, so there's a casual awareness mixed with astute observations that carry impact because of meaning an outsider would miss. It takes the story to another level and deeply immerses the reader in the world Pelecanos has created.

If you enjoy good writing, you'll want to pick this one up.

I almost made a rookie mistake with 'The Night Gardener.'

I found the first 90-ish pages of the book kind of a slog - many characters introduced with what felt like overly detailed descriptions of what they were wearing, and many different threads of story laid out. Where was all this going? What does it have to do with the "20 years ago" prologue I just read? Do I really need to know that this teenage boy is wearing Spongebob boxers under his street clothes?

It was bad enough that I briefly considered putting the book down and moving on to something else. And that would have been the mistake.

When it opens, 'The Night Gardener' will feel familiar to anyone who's read a modern police procedural - there's a body, a crime scene, wry cops making crass jokes, and a serious investigator trying to do his job. All my expectations were set at this point for a story with maybe a twist or two, but leading to a conclusion in which a killer is found and most threads are wrapped up fairly neatly.

Imagine my surprise, then, as George Pelacanos instead paints a picture, with great patience and attention to detail, of flawed humans whose stories flow together and apart like water. The police make mistakes - sometimes they own up to them and sometimes they don't. People try to help one another - sometimes it really does help and sometimes it just reveals that they're dug into a hole they can't climb out of. Families do what they have to do for one another, even when it's hard, even when maybe it's wrong. There's very little that is obvious in 'The Night Gardener,' and even less that is easy.

The ending is a mostly-satisfying one, though not in the way I expected early on. There isn't really a big action scene or a final reveal per se, but a gradual and somber running out of the different threads of character and story. The feeling I had when I closed the book wasn't one of victory or even completion - 'The Night Gardener' feels like a tragedy, a story of lives lost too soon and lives wasted in holding onto grudges.

In the end, 'The Night Gardener' was a far more complex and rewarding story than I thought it would be. I'm glad I took the time to see it through to the end.

Yet another great crime novel from Pelecanos. He can't be beaten, the rest are dullards.

Well, it would have made a great 2-part Homicide series story. I'm a big fan of Pelecanos because of the Wire, and this book has the same effortless, in your face description of the lives in the Ghetto and of the Police. But it lacks a certain amount of sense of completeness (it really feels like a part of a series, habits die hard I suppose) and impactfulness. Also, some of the stuff is kinda recycled from Homicide, Wire (Ramone is basically a variation of TV version of Giardello, several scenes were directly from there). Still, the irony created in the story is strong and it reads so smoothly, I read it in 3 sits I think.

Boring.

For some novels, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the book's impact will be long remembered by any reader. THE NIGHT GARDENER is one of those books. George Pelacanos has long been a master of characterization and dialogue-driven plots. Those aspects are as strong as ever in this novel. Even the secondary and tertiary characters are well-defined, distinct and nuanced. But, via a snapshot in the lives of three men, in the midst of a city torn by racial animus and crime, Pelacanos offers deeper contemplations on love, family, legacy, integrity, and loss.

THE NIGHT GARDENER is well populated with a variety of characters, but the focus is on the lives of three men, two middle-aged and another a generation older . Gus Ramone is the stable one. A successful Homicide detective in Washington, D. C. with two decades of service under his belt. He has a wife he loves, a mortgage, and two children, including a teenage son learning to be a man. "Doc" Holiday is adrift after leaving the police force. He's constructed a successful business to pay the bills, but his live is empty, something Pelacanos portrays adroitly. Third is T. C. Cook, a retired Homicide detective who excelled in his prime. In retirement health problems and regret pervade his everyday as he tries to recover from what he's lost. Ramone and Holiday have a history. They are connected to Cook tenuously, through their presence as young patrolmen at a crime scene where Cook has the lead. The case involved the third murder by a serial killer who preys on youthful victims. The murders are never solved, to Cook's everlasting anguish, and the killings stop.

Twenty years plus afterwards, there is another young man killed in a crime scene that is eerily reminiscent of the old, unsolved murders. Holiday is accidently involved in discovering the body and he brings Cook into an unofficial investigation. Ramone is involved officially, and because the victim is known to his family.

Pelacanos alternates between the parallel investigations and includes additional plotlines as well, some of which don't seem to be especially pertinent to the central investigation at first. Under the guidance of some authors the switching of storylines and perspectives would be jolting or confusing. Pelacanos designs a coherent whole with an ending that creates a true sense of closure despite the outward "life goes on" narrative. This novel is not a traditional mystery, in fact the resolution to the killing at the nexus of this novel is tragically mundane. The book is, however, a compelling sketch of quotidian lives in urban America in the early 2000s. Pelacanos is right up there with writers such as Kate Atkinson in his ability to give power to the everyday.

Walk in the door, gun
goes in safe. Talk to kids, hug
wife. No guarantees.

Title: The Night Gardener
Author: George Pelecanos
ISBN: 978-0-316-05650-2
Pages: 372
Release Date: August 2006
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Crime Fiction
Rating: 4.5 out of 5


Publisher: Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa, whose body has been found in a local community garden.

The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T. C. Cook. The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and now finds work as a bodyguard and driver. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the "Night Gardener" killings.

The new case draws the three men together on a grim mission to finish the work that has haunted them for years. All the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them comes rushing back, and old ghosts walk once more as the men try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams. Bigger and even more unstoppable than his previous thrillers, George Pelecanos achieves in The Night Gardener what his brilliant career has been building toward: a novel that is a perfect union of suspense, character, and unstoppable fate.

My Thoughts: George Pelecanos' The Night Gardener is not your typical crime drama. Pelecanos, a contributing writer on HBO's critically-acclaimed series, The Wire, doesn't just write crime dramas. He writes character studies set against the back drop of crime. What makes The Night Gardener so engrossing is Pelecanos' understanding of human nature, his awareness that people are both good and bad, and his ability to portray these qualities in his characters whether they are perpetrators, victims or investigators. It is this skill that makes The Night Gardener a book that people from all walks of life can identify with and enjoy.

We see this dichotomy in the main character of Gus Ramone, for example, who has his share of dilemmas (moral, professional and otherwise) at work and at home. As a cop, Ramone prides himself on doing his job by the book but struggles over what to do when his usual ways won't get him the results he needs. He's never respected cops who he considered "loose cannons" like former police officer Dan Holliday, whom he believes, willingly and easily stepped over the line to solve. But the day Ramone works a case that's become personal, more to him than just the job, he begins to see things differently. He finds himself questioning whether things really are as black and white as he believes or if, sometimes, passion and desire dictate approaching things from a different angle.

On the home front, in his role as parent, he faces a dilemma regarding his son's education. He loves and trusts his son, Diego, but knows it's hard out in the world beyond the family home's front door. Dangerous elements, bad influences and temptations abound - all the things every concerned parent worries about. So Ramone, after he and his wife discuss it together (while Ramone agonizes over it alone), places Diego in a "better" private school. There he discovers a different set of problems that may be far worse than his son faced while in DC's public school system. Such life changing choices leads Ramone to be constantly second guessing himself. And who among us hasn't undergone that kind of inner struggle, that personal turmoil that makes us wish life wasn't so hard? Ramone's wife is there with him, a constant companion and source of moral support. A confidante. But Ramone, it seems, is ultimately the one on who's shoulders many of these burdens rest, and we hope he eventually finds some peace of mind while trying to achieve the American dream - to be a success at his job and raise a law-abiding, well-educated family in the face of an increasingly hostile and often indifferent society.

When it comes to Ramone's wife, who happens to be a former police officer, and his partner, also a woman, Rhonda Willis, one wishes Pelaconos would have devoted more time to fleshing them out. Since the book comes in at a taut 365 pages, (which goes by at nearly light speed anyway), spending an additional few chapters providing insight into their psyches, their hopes, fears and inspirations, would have been refreshing. Though they offer well-needed and well-timed comic support and witty dialogue, it sometimes seems that's the only reason they are there. Unfortunately, as such they come off as ancillary to the story. They deserve more and we deserve to see Pelecanos turn his knack for writing introspective, distinctive and keen characters to women..

That, I feel, is about all that is warranted by way of criticism for this otherwise exciting and engrossing book. The high points heavily outweigh the shortcomings, and the dialogue, which makes up much of The Night Gardener, is clearly one of its major strengths. Pelecanos excels at subtly introducing ideas and themes through the characters' discussions. The brutally honest way in which Pelecanos' characters communicate and the often "colorful" language used is bound to cause discomfort for some readers. But without it, the book would not ring as true. In cities everywhere, (and why should D.C., the setting, be any different?), for many of the cops and criminals, peppering their language with curses, crude words and expletives comes as natural as breathing. This allows for the graphic dialogue in The Night Gardner to be employed as a tool that makes people confront some bitter truths about the way things really are. If this comes at a cost of discomfort to some readers, all the better as it then serves as a sort of wake up call to some of life's harsher aspects.

tIn summary, don't make the mistake of pigeonholing this book as "just" a crime drama. As I said earlier, the crime is really just the background for the people in the story. Not just good guys and bad guys. But people with relationships to each other, family members, friends, co-workers and more. It's about people and how they live, what they say and how they try and survive in today's society, rife with all the hard hitting and often ugly pitfalls that come with it. So, if you like crime dramas, if you like character studies, if you like novels that read like factual accounts, read Pelecanos books especially The Night Gardener.

I hadn't read anything by Pelecanos in several years and had forgotten what a master he is of the inner city police procedural. He is also a producer and writer for The Wire and a new series on HBO about the growth of the porn industry.

This novel goes back to the future when Asa, a middle school boy, is found dead in a community garden. Detective Gus Ramone is not assigned the case, but his son was a friend of the boy's although they hadn't spent a lot of time together recently. Gus takes an interest in the case because of the connection with his son.

A retired detective who was renowned for his closing ability also takes an interest in the case along with a former cop who is still bitter about being forced to "walk away." He has his own limo service, but he hates himself and his job. The retired detective and disgraced former cop do their own investigation.

There is also another ongoing case that threads in and out of the story involving a young wannabe gangster whose uncle is trying to keep from a life of crime. His uncle finds himself involved in a crime and walks away. The young man soon meets a sad, predictable fate.

This story has an ending that I didn't expect. Apparently there is another book that recently came out, a young adult fantasy called The Night Gardener. This book would make an incredible film.

When I want a good mystery, I usually turn to time-tested, well-respected authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The Night Gardener was published last year, but I have a feeling that it will prove to be a classic and its author, George Pelecanos, held up as an equal in the craft to writers like Hammett and Chandler. The premise of this police procedural is that two decades ago, there was a series of murders of children in community gardens in DC. Twenty years later, there is another murder, and one that fits the old pattern. The novel follows three cops, united in the old investigation, as they try and make sense of this killer’s apparent return. Like Hammett, Pelecanos is less concerned with solving the crime than he is with the men who solve it. In so doing, Pelecanos makes The Night Gardener not only a police procedural, but a character study of the Metropolitan Police Department, a commentary on raising children in America, and a damning critique of Washington, D.C.

3.5
I wasn't sure how to rate this book. I loved the Nick Stefanos series by Pelecanos. So last year I read "Drama City" which was not so good. For the first 200 pages, this one was similar. A misery to read. However, "The Night Gardener" had a great second half and I found myself thinking about the book days later. That is one marker of a good book.

I really enjoyed the main characters and there development, except possibly a hundred pages less would have sufficed. T. C. was an excellent character and he was given a good end. Two stars for the first half, 4 stars for the last half. It should be 3 stars but for the ending I bumped this one up to 4 stars.

I’m cheap. I buy my entertainment books at the local library used book stand, and donate the ones I’ve read. It’s a good system for all, and it does a bit supports the library, I suppose, in hard times. It does mean, though, that I come by my thrillers way past their publication date—truthfully, well past their publication year. I don’t much mind, though. Unless they’re really old, they read pretty much the same. No burning issues. I've loved the genre since browing up with the greats--Leslie Charteris, G.K. Chesteron, Daphne DuMaurier, Ngaio Marsh--and, of course, Agatha and Sir Arthur. You know who I mean...

Anyway, there are certainly no burning social or philosophical issues in The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos, which I just finished last night. It's a change of pace from Than Geoff! Pelecanos writes TV escapist fare--cop shows--and that much is evident here. The action is fast-paced, the street dialogue cryptic and convincing. Not too much gore, but murders aplenty and a hint of the currently topical theme of sex abuse. Characters are engaging, vulnerable, each broken in some way, some sufficiently well explored to be sympathetic.

The book is a page-turner. For a reader who, like myself, gets hooked on story and is impatient to know how it unfolds , The Night Gardener is guaranteed to keep you up a bit longer than you’d planned. My quibble: I do get tired of the macho exchange of tough cop talk between, mostly, guys who have a lot invested in their guy-ness—football, booze and sex. Otherwise, if you enjoy this kind of nonsense as I do, I say go for it.