Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

Pelecanos, George P.

ISBN 10: 0312130562 / ISBN 13: 9780312130565

Published by St Martins Pr, New York, NY, 1995

About this Item

First edition, first printing. SIGNED by author on title page. Third in the series featuring Nick Stefanos; set in Washington, DC. Dust jacket in Mylar.

Seller Inventory # 002257

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
• Publisher: St Martins Pr, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312130562
• ISBN 13: 9780312130565
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

After a night of heavy drinking, Nick Stefanos passes out in a public park. Some time before dawn, the slam of a car door and a steady, frantic moan wake him. He hears a man say, "You already been a punk, and shit. Least you can do is go out a man." And then a muffled scream.
And that's how Nick Stefanos comes to investigate the murder of Calvin Jeter, an investigation that will take him through the heart of Washington, D.C. and into the unlit alleys of the human soul.

Reviews

Welcome to the unlit bleakness of grunge crime fiction. Nick Stefanos (Nick's Trip) inhabits D.C.'s most squalid streets, tending bar, boozing for free, wasting his 30s and dating a girl with a taste for the sauce to rival his. One night, out on a bender and nearly passed out, he hears a murder being committed and decides to find the killers (how a guy this hammered can later remember so much is cheerfully glossed over). Nick gets himself an alarmingly straight-arrow partner and dives headlong into the underbelly of the porn trade. Two young black men have been dealing drugs and selling their bodies; one is dead, and the other is missing. Stefanos only pauses to drink, listen to music by bands with whom only the hippest readers will be familiar and have a few bouts of desperate sex. Although his innumerable descriptions of bars and boozing might leave some bored (or queasy), Pelecanos joins company with James Ellroy, Andrew Vachss and Jack O' Connell in extending the noirest tones of crime fiction. Here, he unleashes a lacerating view of urban angst and degradation.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Give bartender Nick Stefanos a bottle of booze, a pack of smokes, and some good lovin', and he's a happy man. Nick lives for the first and last drinks of the day and all the drinks between, but once in a while, he comes out of his alcoholic fog and does some detecting work. After a stupor-inducing night with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Stefanos comes to on the bank of the Anacostia River and hears a murder being committed just yards away. The experience shakes him out of his funk and draws him into a mysterious case with roots deep in the D.C. ghetto. Stefanos teams up with one Jack LaDuke to find the murderers, but even with a partner, he's got more than he can handle. Pelecanos writes the ultimate in hard-boiled, hardcore fiction, with evil characters, graphic violence, and rough language. This is a powerful, shocking foray into an uncompromising, bleak world of depravity and decadence, a book that will stick with the reader long after the awful conclusion. Emily Melton