Shame the Devil (D.C. Quartet Series, 4) - Softcover

Pelecanos, George P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031613340X ISBN 13: 9780316133401

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2011

Synopsis

Frank Farrow is a natural-born killer. Roman Otis is a fine-looking crooner who does his killing on the side. On a hot D.C. afternoon Frank and Roman hit a pizza shop called May's. When the hit was over, four people were executed. A cop was shot. A boy was dead. And when the sirens stopped wailing and the killers vanished into the heat, dozens of lives were shattered forever.

Now it's three years later, and Dimitri Karras, who lost a son, is starting to live again. But Dimitri's old acquaintance, a P.I. named Nick Stefanos, has just unburied the past--by discovering the killers' identity. Suddenly the second act of a crime story is about to be told. Because the May's pizza parlor killers are coming back into town: where they'll be greeted with open arms, broken hearts, and at least one loaded gun.

About this title

Review

Penzler Pick, February 2000: Just as Robert B. Parker and Dennis Lehane have made Boston their own and Los Angeles has been the distinct province of a lineage leading from Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald to Michael Connelly and Robert Crais, so is George Pelecanos the storyteller who's put Washington, D.C., on the noir map. Once considered "the best-kept secret in crime fiction" by his peers, he is now fast leaving behind those days of strictly word-of-mouth fame and cult status.

Telling it like he sees it, and looking fearlessly into those dark, forgotten alleyways that lay too far beyond the corridors of power to make it into any guidebooks, Pelecanos conjures up a gritty, ghostly Washington of working-class neighborhoods and aging suburbs and shoots it through with chillingly unpredictable menace. Most Washington natives probably wouldn't recognize the place--but they couldn't stop trying either, knowing that they've at least glimpsed (out of the corners of their eyes) those environs where a Pelecanos character is most at home.

In Shame the Devil, we find a society of grieving men and women connected by loss, betrayal, the need for revenge, and the shadowy presence of evil. As in other Pelecanos tales, the heroes are not easily identified, love is a coming together of wounded souls, and answers are found where least expected. In the aftermath of a botched armed robbery, a fair number of lives have been thrown into a downward spiral. The problems, however, come on faster and with more fury once the status quo sustaining the survivors has been breached by an ill-wishing and unwanted addition to their little group.

Here are two favorite moments. In one, protagonist Dimitri Karras asks the name of a fellow bar patron. Hearing that he's called Happy, Karras comments that he doesn't look too happy. The answer: "He's pacing himself." The other: we hear the thoughts of the sociopathic villain: "Some believed that incarceration was a mark of failure, but Frank disagreed. Prison was an essential element of any career criminal's education."

With Shame the Devil, Pelecanos solidifies his position among the elite of the brilliant coterie of young noir writers who are creating the emerging classics of the genre. --Otto Penzler

From the Back Cover

"For some time George P. Pelecanos has been the best-kept secret in crime fiction--maybe all fiction...the word among writers and those in the know has long been 'Read Pelecanos.'"
-- Michael Connelly, author of Void Moon

"One of the best crime novelists alive, George Pelecanos is an American original."
-- Dennis Lehane, author of Prayers for Rain

"Tough and skillful...there are action scenes as fierce as any you will read and street talk that hits the ear as smart and accurate."
-- San Francisco Chronicle

Also by George P. Pelecanos

The Sweet Forever

"Brilliant."
-- The Dallas Morning News

"The Sweet Forever is the bomb!"
-- The Seattle Times
King Suckerman

"King Suckerman's got jive, juice, and a whole lotta justice."
-- Time Out

"A great read . . . stunning and forceful."
-- Michael Connelly, author of Void Moon

Available from Dell

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 031613340X
• ISBN 13: 9780316133401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 401