George P. Pelecanos

Hell to Pay: A Novel

George P. Pelecanos

• 2002 LATimes–Mystery winner
• 2003 Anthony-Novel nominee
• 2003 Barry-Novel nominee
• 2003 Shamus-Novel nominee
• Score: 28.52

Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of investigators who made their bestselling debut in Right As Rain, are hired to find a fourteen-year-old girl who’s run away from her home in the suburbs. It’s easy for Strange and Quinn to learn that the girl is now working as a prostitute in one of D.C.’s most brutal neighborhoods. Getting her to leave is harder. The two ex-cops think they know this world-but nothing in their experience has prepared them for the vengeance of Worldwide Wilson, the ruthless operator whose territory they are intruding upon.

Their…

Right as Rain

George P. Pelecanos

• 2002 Barry-Novel nominee
• 2001 Dagger shortlist
• 2001 Hammett nominee
• Score: 18.52

Derek Strange is an ex-cop who now runs his own private detective agency. The mother of a young police officer killed by another cop hires him to clear up the lingering doubts surrounding her son’s death. Although Terry Quinn, the other cop, has been cleared in the official investigation, his guilt torments him. After Strange interviews him, Quinn joins the investigation, even though in part he is investigating himself and whether his own prejudices led him to pull the trigger.

Strange and Quinn seek their answers in the darkest sectors of Washington, D.C.,…

The Night Gardener: A Novel

George P. Pelecanos

• 2007 Barry-Novel winner
• 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
• Score: 16.57

The haunting story of three cops—one good, one bad, one broken—and the murder that reunites them in a showdown decades in the making. Gus Ramone is good police, a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city’s Violent Crime branch. His new case involves a body found in a community garden. The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop 20 years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan “Doc” Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T.C. Cook. The series of murders was never solved.

Holiday left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and Cook retired but still agonizes about the Night Gardener killings. The new case draws the three men together, re-igniting the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them as they try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams.

Soul Circus

George P. Pelecanos

• 2003 LATimes–Mystery winner
• Score: 10.53

A Washington, D.C., crime overlord is fighting for his life in court. Two younger dealers are fighting for his territory, prestige, and millions of dollars in future profits. It takes only one slip-a kid going out of control with a rented pistol-to push friction closer to wholesale slaughter.

In the midst of this extraordinary tension, private investigator Derek Strange has found a woman whose testimony could mean death or freedom for the crime lord. He wants her to talk-but first he’ll have to find a way to keep her alive.

Step by step, Strange and his…

Drama City: A Novel

George P. Pelecanos

• 2006 Edgar–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.56

Lorenzo Brown just wants to stay straight. After eight years in prison on a drug charge, he’s come “uptown”—back to the Washington, DC neighborhood where he grew up, where his old cohorts still work their corners and their angles, trying to get ahead and stay alive. But Lorenzo’s had enough of the life: now he has a job as a Humane Society officer, policing animal abusers and protecting the abused. In the dangerous streets he used to menace, Lorenzo plays a part in maintaining order—and it’s a role reversal some of his former friends don’t appreciate. Rachel…

Hard Revolution: A Novel

George P. Pelecanos

• 2005 Barry-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.55

Derek Strange is a rookie cop, the job he’s dreamed of since he was a boy. His brother, Dennis, has not been as fortunate; home from the service with a disability pension and zero prospects, he is a man with good intentions but bad habits. Derek has always looked out for Dennis, but no amount of brotherly love can save him from the dangerous world of Alvin Jones, a local bottom-feeder, hustler, and stone killer who draws him into his web of violence.

While the rookie cop navigates the rocky terrain of a city in turmoil, a family in crisis, and his love for a…

Shame the Devil: A Novel

George P. Pelecanos

• 2000 LATimes–Mystery finalist
• Score: 6.5

Shame the Devil opens with a restaurant robbery gone awry in Washington, D.C. Several workers are shot in cold blood, the gunman’s brother is killed by police, a young boy is run over by the getaway car. Victims and their relatives gather together in the aftermath, attempting to find a way past their grief. Except one: the gunman is determined to avenge, not grieve, his lost brother—by killing every person involved in his death.

Shame the Devil captures D.C. as only “the Zola of Washington” (PW) could, bringing together characters whose survival readers…