Soul Circus - Softcover

Pelecanos, George P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752858793 ISBN 13: 9780752858791

Publisher: Orion, 2004

Synopsis

Private Investigator Derek Strange and his partner, Terry Quinn, are running a PI business in the seedy underbelly of Washington DC are approached by a young man asking them to find his girlfriend who has gone missing. And so Strange and Quinn find her. Just another day? Not quite. In the grimy underworld inhabited by Strange, nothing is that simple. For Strange and Quinn's efforts have led to a young mother being brutally murdered - a devastating discovery that causes them both to question the morality by which they live. And yet at the same time they need to continue the search for another missing girl, a teenage runaway who shows up in a porn video. And who hasn't been seen since. Bleak, gritty and moving, SOUL CIRCUS superbly brings to life the devastating story of life and death in Washington's black ghettos.

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Review

George Pelecanos's Washington, D.C., is a place rife with high-living drug dealers, easily obtained guns, and a generation depleted by ignorance, excessive machismo, and misplaced trust in the equalizing power of violence. Yet PI Derek Strange "did love D.C.," as Pelecanos acknowledges in Soul Circus, his third novel (after Right as Rain and Hell to Pay) to feature this mid-50s black detective and his younger white partner, Terry Quinn. Strange's optimism may be running at even higher gear than normal here, following his marriage to his longtime secretary, Janine Baker, and his determination to be a good stepfather to her son.

Picking up where Hell to Pay left off, we find Strange working in Soul Circus on behalf of Granville Oliver, a manipulative black mobster charged with murder and racketeering, who faces the death penalty. To help his client knock that sentence down to life imprisonment, Strange will have to find a nail salon worker named Devra Stokes, who used to be the girlfriend of Phillip Wood, a former associate of Oliver's and now the prosecution's chief witness against him. Stokes had sworn out an abuse complaint against Wood, and might testify that he was behind at least one of the killings Oliver is said to have planned. But, fearing for her own safety and that of her young son, she wants no part of Oliver's defense. Meanwhile, Quinn--against his better judgment--helps a homely, unpredictable gangsta-wannabe, Mario "Twigs" Durham, locate his girlfriend, who supposedly went missing, but in fact skipped out with his drug stash. Even as the threads of this yarn come together amid a deadly gang conflict, Pelecanos stays focused on his characters--not only his intriguingly troubled sleuths, but also a deftly nuanced cop-turned-gun dealer, Ulysses Foreman. Buttressed by Pelecanos's street-slangy prose, Soul Circus delivers an un-blindered perspective on urban life (and death) that manages to be both frightening and hopeful. Not so unlike the city in which it's set. --J. Kingston Pierce

About the Author

George Pelecanos lives in Washington D.C. with his wife and children. He also manages Circle Films, an independent production company responsible for such films as the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. Richard Allen: As a veteran stage actor, Richard Allen works on both coats of the US, from originating the role of Booker T. Washington in the hit musical, Ragtime, to his recent Los Angeles Drama Critics nominated work in Play On! An acclaimed narrator of audiobooks, he resides in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0752858793
• ISBN 13: 9780752858791
• Binding: Paperback