Shame the Devil by George P. Pelecanos Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Shame the Devil
Book Review: Fan-freakin'-tastic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Pelecanos does it again. The life paths of two old friends intersect in the non-power corridors of Washington DC. Nick, the PI, drinks a bit too much but never loses his sense of when something doesn't look right. Dimitri is deeply depressed and haunted by the memory of his little boy, killed by a getaway car. The years go by, the crime remains unsolved. Until the killers come back to town, ready to try one more spectacular robbery. Ready for just about anything...except these two wily Greeks. The plotting is superb, the characters jump off the page at you. You know these people. You care about them. You might want to close your eyes at the scary parts. Shame the Devil is a masterpiece of crime fiction that will leave you wanting more.Book Review: GREAT BOOK!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the first novel that I've read by George Pelecanos and I absolutely loved it. The action, the storyline...that stuff was bad! I especially liked the racial harmony thing going on in the book. If only we could achieve that in real life.Book Review: Greatness
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my 1st Pelecanos novel, and frankly I cannot understand why it is not a number 1 bestseller. His character development is as good as it gets, and the dialog is so cool and realistic I actually said to myself more than once "This guy is great." If you want to read crime fiction I strongly recommend Shame the Devil. I wish I could give this book 10+ stars because it is brilliant.Book Review: Interesting and different
Summary: 4 Stars
I read a lot of hard-boiled detective novels. Most are first person narrated, POV stories that are rather focused in their narrative. You rarely come across a detective novel where all of the characters, including the villains, are followed, one after the other, as the narrative sort of wanders around. This is very different from what I'm used to with detective novels (I've read other types of books that do this, but not this type).
Three guys rob a pizza joint in a lower-class Washington DC neighborhood. They have a shootout with one of the people in the place, kill him, and then kill everyone else to get rid of the witnesses. On their way out of the place, they are confronted by a cop. He kills one of them and is in turn seriously wounded. They then disappear. Two years pass.
Then the novel really starts. The main character is Nick Stefanos, a part-time bartender and sometime investigator for various lawyers around the city. The bad guys (who've been hiding outside of town) are returning, mostly to avenge the death of the one guy who was killed by the cop, and (of course) Stefanos gets tangentially involved through some of the other characters, who he knows. The ending is suitably violent and conclusive.
I usually try to read books like this in order. I *thought* this was the first of the Stefanos books that Pelecanos wrote. Instead it turns out to be the last. So while I enjoyed it, I was constantly confused by things that were referred to in the book, which I apparently should have known but didn't. Interestingly, I read this book while on vacation in Washington DC. I read the opening sequence where Stefanos goes to the Supreme Court cafeteria and has lunch the day after I had lunch there myself. I also spent some time looking around at the neighborhoods and citizens of the citizens of the city. What Pelecanos wrote added to the experience.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it.
Book Review: Noir in the Unknown Washington DC
Summary: 5 Stars
George Pelecanos writes convincingly about the underside of Washington DC, the flip side of the glamorous branches of government. We have all waded through those tiresome DC-based legal and political thrillers that would have you believe that Washington DC is the exclusive enclave of the hyper-rich, powerful and wonderful. Pelecanos paints a vibrant picture of life in a downscale bar, the customers, the employees, and the lives that touch them. Nick Stefanos is a part-time private investigator and a full-time bartender. It is never a pretty picture. Alcoholism is front and center; lives of desperation, futility, corruption and crushing poverty are touched. The local DC government is portrayed as decaying and failing.An interesting quirk is that all of the characters love music. Each scene has a piece of rock music that the author describes enthusiastically. It is just one of the details that provides so much richness to the image.
In this dismal environment, Pelecanos creates characters that are real. They have hopes and aspirations. And, they are prisoners of their past. You enter Nick's world and are swept along in an interesting and exciting plot. This author has an uncanny ability to craft a plot that is always believable and inevitable, without being predictable. Nick finds the small links that pull the solution to an old mystery together in a totally credible manner. You will find yourself caring for and liking the exotic characters in this book. Many current mystery authors cite Pelecanos as personal favorites. I rate this five-stars with a bullet!