OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Author Pelecanos writes and narrator James Shippy delivers a story of well-intentioned men behaving badly. Honorable but slightly shady PI Phil Ornazian tampers with a witness in order to have Michael Hudson released from prison. Hudson ends up caught between his desire to go straight and the pressure to pay back Ornazian for helping him. Surprisingly, this is also a story about the power of books to engage, inspire, and transform. All of this is set in Pelecanos’s Washington, DC. Shippy deftly differentiates the characters—black and white, male and female—although his voicing of Ornazian’s wife’s English working-class accent is jolting. He carefully enunciates each word of the narrative with a steady, even-paced cadence, sometimes emphasizing the significance of certain phrases with strategic pauses. Pelecanos fans will appreciate this listen. E.Q. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio
This is an author who writes with the steady hand of a man who knows he's driving a cool set of wheels and respects his own mechanical skills. And that reminds us of another thing about a Pelecanos novel: You'll never get lost. His precise descriptions of Washington neighborhoods read as if they were being dictated by someone driving a fast car, maybe a muscle car, something a teenager would look twice at. Or steal.
Publishers Weekly
★ 07/16/2018
Michael Hudson, the hero of this unforgettable novel of crime, redemption, and the transformative power of the written word from Edgar-finalist Pelecanos (The Double), awaits trial in a Washington, D.C., jail for armed robbery. Like many of his fellow inmates, Hudson has taken to reading as a way to pass the time. He looks forward to the books carefully chosen for him by jail librarian Anna Byrne, who leads regular book discussion groups. As Hudson devours novels, he begins to catch a glimpse of a larger world outside, one that he didn’t realize was available to him. Meanwhile, Phil Orzanian, an investigator for Hudson’s defense attorney, dissuades a witness from testifying, and Hudson is suddenly out free. Orzanian turns out to run a side business robbing drug dealers and other criminals of their ill-gotten gains, and he reminds Hudson of the debt the former inmate owes him. As the fates of Hudson, Orzanian, and Byrne collide, Pelecanos shows that doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest option. Inspired by the author’s own experience with prison literacy programs, this is the work of a master storyteller at the top of his game. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM Partners. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Like his hero Elmore Leonard, Pelecanos finds the humanity in the lowest of lowlifes. . . . Pelecanos' peppery dialogue energizes every page."—Lloyd Sachs, Chicago Tribune
"This is a book about love of family, about the stresses that can lure almost anyone into crime and about how hard it can be for someone [to] make it on the outside. But most of all, it is a book about the transformative powers of friendship and reading. The story is told in tight, soulful prose by a novelist who has devoted many hours to inmate literacy programs in D.C."—Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press
If I were in jail, George Pelecanos would be on my reading list, right up there with James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard. . . . Pelecanos's characters [are] so human and so doomed. This is an author who writes with the steady hand of a man who knows he's driving a cool set of wheels and respects his own mechanical skills."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
"A modern storytelling master's paean to the power of books, literature, librarians, and booksellers."—Bethanne Patrick, NPR.org
"One of the top ten crime novels of the decade . . . George Pelecanos's tales of tough times in Washington DC have all the force, and none of the nonsense, of ancient Greek tragedy."—Mark Sanderson, The Times [UK]
"Read this crime novel for entertainment, a look into the human condition in extraordinary circumstances, and for the dissection of the democratic act of the experience of reading great books."—KUMW
"In this book, George Pelecanos stretches, showing a broader understanding of his characters' actions and motivations, and the result is a more interesting book. I hope that whatever he may do in television in the future, he never stops writing novels."—Washington Times
"The thriller plot is taut and suspenseful, as jolting as it is carefully nuanced, but it is Pelecanos' focus on character, on his ability to show the richness and depth of his people, as well as their often-heartbreaking yearning for something more, that gives this novel-and all his work-its special power."—Booklist, Starred Review
"Using his customary knowing dialogue and stripped-down, soulful prose, Pelecanos skillfully, sensitively works the urban frontier where the problems and stresses of everyday life cross the line into the sort of criminal behavior that could tempt anyone-anyone at all."—Kirkus
OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Author Pelecanos writes and narrator James Shippy delivers a story of well-intentioned men behaving badly. Honorable but slightly shady PI Phil Ornazian tampers with a witness in order to have Michael Hudson released from prison. Hudson ends up caught between his desire to go straight and the pressure to pay back Ornazian for helping him. Surprisingly, this is also a story about the power of books to engage, inspire, and transform. All of this is set in Pelecanos’s Washington, DC. Shippy deftly differentiates the characters—black and white, male and female—although his voicing of Ornazian’s wife’s English working-class accent is jolting. He carefully enunciates each word of the narrative with a steady, even-paced cadence, sometimes emphasizing the significance of certain phrases with strategic pauses. Pelecanos fans will appreciate this listen. E.Q. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-06-18
Pelecanos (The Martini Shot, 2015, etc.) follows the trails of three nominally free agents drawn together by the matrix of the D.C. jail.Michael Hudson has been arrested and is awaiting trial for robbery. Phil Ornazian is an investigator who works for Matthew Mirapaul, his old friend and Michael's lawyer. Anna Kaplan Byrne is the prison librarian who supplies Michael with the novels that make him feel, for as long as he's reading, that "he was not locked up. He was free." The prison setting makes it clear who the good guys and the bad guys are. Then Ornazian gets Michael freed by encouraging the man who accused him not to testify, and it's not so clear anymore. Michael, supported by Doretha Hudson, the mother who speaks plainly of both her disappointment and her hope in him, seems to be making ends meet working as a dishwasher in the District Line, a local restaurant. Ornazian, who runs an occasional sideline with bail bondsman Thaddeus Ward to rob local pimps, gets a lead on a ripe new target named Gustav at the same time he's working a case of vandalism, robbery, and assault for a client of Mirapaul's who hasn't wanted to expose to the authorities his daughter's folly in advertising on Facebook the party that was crashed by the vandals. Anna finds herself running into Michael at the District Line and, more disquietingly, outside her home. She very much wants Michael to go straight. He wants to go straight himself. But Ornazian wants him to drive the getaway car for his latest hijacking, and then the one after that. How can he possibly stay clean?Using his customary knowing dialogue and stripped-down, soulful prose, Pelecanos skillfully, sensitively works the urban frontier where the problems and stresses of everyday life cross the line into the sort of criminal behavior that could tempt anyone—anyone at all.
