Shoedog - Hardcover

Pelecanos, George P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312110618 ISBN 13: 9780312110611

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

Synopsis

In a hardboiled noir mystery by the author of Nick's Trip, a Washington, D.C., liquor store heist shows a drifter named Constantine what it means to be a shoedog.

About this title

About the Author:

George Pelecanos is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels set in and around Washington, DC. His works have earned him the Raymond Chandler Award in Italy, the Falcon Award in Japan, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir in France. He is also an independent-film producer, an essayist, and a producer and Emmy-nominated writer of the HBO hit series The Wire. He currently writes for the acclaimed HBO series Treme. He lives with his family in Silver Spring, Maryland.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sixty years ago, in The Postman Always Rings Twice , James M. Cain established the drifter as a dark knight of American crime fiction. Pelecanos ( Nick's Trip ) continues that tradition here, following Constantine, an enigmatic wanderer who falls into a den of thieves and disproves the adage that there's no honor among them. Hitchhiking south from Maryland to nowhere, Constantine takes a lift from an old man who stops at a country mansion to get some money. There Grimes, an equally old but wealthy man who organizes heists as a hobby, invites the pair to help rob two D.C. liquor stores. Swayed by "the Beat" ("the Beat was knowing that he was into something wrong, and the fear of it, and the point when the fear was no longer there. It was a hot buzz . . ."), Constantine signs on as a driver. He and his colleagues, who are all being blackmailed by Grimes, drink, plan and pick up women, with Constantine dangerously zeroing in on Grimes's young lover ("there was a freshness in her like newly printed money"). The robberies themselves, marred by a doublecross, go down fast and bad, leading Constantine to avenge his fallen partners by taking justice into his own hands. All sinners, none saints, the small-time hoods in this authentic world are crisply limned here in their fallible humanity.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0312110618
• ISBN 13: 9780312110611
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200