Right As Rain

Rating:
Summary: ultra cool characters, gritty setting, but boring plot
Review: Make no mistake, Pelecanos knows the gritty side of D.C., he knows street-smart talk, and he builds two fine main characters who step off the page as real flesh and blood, and who thoughtfully explore themes of race and police work. Unfortunately, these two likeable heroes spend most of the book simply driving around town, eating at various restaurants, going out on dates with their girlfriends, and talking endlessly about music. And more music. And more music. Which is okay, except for the fact I was led to believe this book was a mystery. Well, the mystery got shoved deep into some closet and it was only allowed to pop out every so often. The story lacked drive and suspense, and about 2/3 of the way through the book, I gave up and just skimmed to the end (through more endless talk about music and dating) to see if there was, indeed, any solution to the mystery.

This book has gotten some glowing reviews, both on this site and by book critics. If you want to read about every dark nook and cranny in D.C., this book will satisfy you. But I'm afraid it just bored me to tears.

Rating:
Summary: Just fine, but ...
Review: No doubt about it, George Pelecanos is a gifted writer. His particular skills lie in characterizations and in pacing. Right as Rain has a cast of well-defined characters, even the most secondary of them. The storyline of a bereaved mother seeking to clear her dead police-officer-son's name is entirely believable. But, really, this is a tale of innate racism--from both sides of the fence. The black, middle-aged PI Derek Strange is as prejudiced in his own way, as the young former cop, Terry Quinn, is in his. As a dark morality tale with drugs at the root of all evil, this book works pretty well ... Except for a certain preachiness Strange displays in the latter part of the book that reads as if the author is speaking and not his hero. Suddenly, Strange slides out of character to make a little speech about how to solve the US drug problem. Then, just as suddenly, he slides back into character and becomes his usual taciturn, non-revealing self. While I don't for a moment disagree with the central thesis--that making drugs legal would eliminate most of the peripheral problems connected with addicts' efforts to obtain them--it is a jarring note in an otherwise smoothly written narrative. The other, consistent, jarring note comes in the form of (mercifully) brief, unpleasantly graphic depictions of ugly sexual encounters--even when they're intended to be "romantic."

The thugs and drug addicts, the dealers, bent cops and everyone else in this book are well-conceived and come fully to life. There's great tension in the narrative that keeps the reader glued to the page. And everything seems to have been set in place for a sequel--which I would buy and read without hesitation. But I'll be hoping the author doesn't use another leading character as a vehicle for sermonizing, but rather allows the characters to speak for themselves, in their own voices. This detracted from an otherwise fine book.

Rating:
Summary: Annoying
Review: Not much of a mystery - more like a sociological treatise masquarading as a mystery. Race is on center stage in this book, but only in a slipshod way. Basically, the black characters are drawn as multi-dimensional human beings, while most of the white characters are stock villians. As such, it starts to remind you of Blaxploitation literature of the '70s. As a resident of DC, I was also irritated by the endless moaning over how the city has changed in recent years, as though its a sin to open a decent restaurant downtown! All in all it was a decent read, but I won't be coming back for more.

Rating:
Summary: More from the Mean Streets of DC
Review: Oddly, no one from DC has thrown in their 2 cents on the latest Pelecanos book, so I guess I'll give it a shot. I've lived in DC for 20 years, my family is from here, and Pelecanos is only the second author I've come across who writes about the DC that I know and recognize (the other Edward Jones, check out his story collection "Lost in the City" if you can find it). In this new book, he steps away from his established characters Nick Stefanos and Dmitri Karras, and launches a new duo, black, middle-aged PI Derek Strange, and younger, white ex-cop Terry Quinn. Through them, and the story of Chris Wilson, an off-duty black cop shot by Quinn, Pelecanos displays the racial awkwardness and tension that pervades Washington, D.C. The central message of the book is that everyone, regardless of race, carries preconceptions with them about other groups. That doesn't make them racist-that term is reserved for those who carry hatred in their hearts.

Strange is hired to investigate the shooting of her son, Chris Wilson, leading him to Quinn, who works in a little used bookstore in Silver Spring (Like all the locations in the book, the store really exists, it's a few blocks from my office and I sometimes swing by on my lunch break). The two men fall into an uneasy partnership as this discover more about he events that led to Quinn's killing of Wilson. They make an engagingly effective odd couple as they verbally spar with one another about race, underneath their respective flaws, they're good men. At the same time, both men are struggling to make relationships work, Strange with his divorcee secretary, and Quinn with a Latina student/waitress. As with most of Pelecanos's men, they often make selfish or simply clumsy moves in looking for love. And like most of those same guys, they have well-defined tastes in music, cars, movies, and books.

Following the tone of Pelecanos's previous work, what is gradually revealed is a sordid tale of drugs and corruption, with some powerful drug pushers, and a few violent rednecks. All this unfolds in a world instantly recognizable to Washington natives, where drug dealers work in the open, neighborhoods revolve around local restaurants, and corruption has spread to even the upscale oases (the well-known high-end restaurant Red Sage being one example). As we have come to expect from Pelecanos, everything comes together in a cinematic violent climax offering some attempt at justice. If you've read and enjoyed previous books of his, you're likely to enjoy this one as well. It's got two great new characters, and is a bit more explicit in examining racism, but is otherwise very much in keeping with his previous work.

Rating:
Summary: One of Pelecanos' Best Novels, and That's Saying a Lot!
Review: Over the weekend, I read George P. Pelecanos' latest, _Right as Rain_ and what a beautiful novel it was. Actually, I've cruised through his entire output in the past 10 or so months, and this book ranks right up there with _The Sweet Forever_, still my favorite.

I love the way he describes Washington, D.C. in these books. I don't think I'd want to live there, but his characters obviously love the place and there are times when that affection almost overshadows the violent, seedy, downtrodden neighborhoods and lives described elsewhere. I also love the way the same characters weave in and out of the books, and how you can chart the downfall of the city, from _The Big Blowdown_ onward.

That said, this book doesn't feature any of the characters from previous books, although the main relationship, between Terry Quinn, a former policeman and currently a clerk in a used book/ record store, and Derek Strange, also a former policeman (though much longer ago) and current private detective, might remind readers of the friendship between Dmitri Karras and Marcus Clay, in _King Suckerman_ and _The Sweet Forever_.

This is because Terry is white and Derek is black. And this, along with a riveting mystery, is Pelecanos' main theme in the book: how are the races getting along? Is it possible to cross the divide and be friends? There are a lot of probing insights into this throughout the course of the book.

Essentially, Strange is hired to look into the shooting of an off-duty policeman, Chris Wilson, by Quinn, some years before. Although Quinn has been cleared of wrongdoing, there's still some question whether he was too quick to pull the trigger, simply because Wilson was black. From there, the two men gradually develop a real friendship, as they delve into the case Wilson was working on, a case that eventually proves to involve drugs and gangs.

This is, simply put, great writing. Elmore Leonard has nothing on Mr. Pelecanos when it comes to writing memorable dialogue. And the racial issues at the emotional core of the novel really elevate it above the norm. Since I've moved from an English professor to the librarian at a small junior college in southern Colorado, I've been adding his books to the collection and it's been gratifying to see them go out and to hear the positive comments. If you still haven't read Mr. Pelecanos, what are you waiting for?

Rating:
Summary: Fine Writing
Review: Pelecanos doesn't mess around. He writes good books about important subjects. In this case, the story revolves around issues of race and racism, a subject which could be dull or banal in other hands. Pelecanos avoids (for the most part) tendentious lectures, and allows his characters to speak and act their parts in such a way that his points get across.

An excellent book, well plotted and characterized, with fine dialogue and Pelecanos's trademark gallows humor.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Compelling
Review: Pelecanos' writing sometimes threatens to sink under the weight of its own savvy hipness. That said, he writes vivid, gripping, intelligent character-driven stories and this is no exception. Derek Strange, a black Washington PI is hired by the mother of a black policeman who has died in a shooting incident involving a white colleague, Terry Quinn. The mother's suspicions focus on Quinn and she is keen for Strange to dig into his background where she is sure something sinister awaits discovery. In fact, Strange and Quinn quite quickly become friends and together find much that is plenty sinister to uncover in quite different aspects of the incident. The plot is neatly put together, and Pelecanos has thoughtful and perceptive things to say about the psychological dynamics of racial distrust. The characterization is generally convincing though more so with the good guys than with the bad and much more so with male than female characters.

Two small-ish qualms. In the first place, Pelecanos would probably do well to give up on sex scenes. When - as is the case here - they are weakly done and add nothing to our understanding of character or plot, they feel gratuitous and cynical. In the second place, I am certain the paragraph on pp8-9 describing Strange's professional equipment is not a case of literary product placement but it does read alarmingly like advertising copy.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: Reading the reviews I was convinced this would be a good stoy. Boy was I wrong. BORING BORING BORING. There was alot of potential here the characters were pretty good. There was nothing to keep you turning the pages. You figured out how the whole thing would play out very quickly.I tortured myself by pushing on hoping that it would get better. It never did!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: New Masterpiece by Pelecanos
Review: Right as Rain captures the complex social, economic, and racial environment in our nation's capital. The story involves the unlikely alliance of Derek Strange, a black PI, and Terry Quinn, a white cop who left the force after shooting Chris Wilson, an unarmed black man. Pelecanos explores modern Washington, DC. He shows us a realistic picture of the underlass and the criminal class that reside in the capital of the free world. Right as Rain is a great read--modern noir at its best.

Rating:
Summary: Local Review
Review: Right as Rain is a good airplane book. It held my interest and passed the time. I found his attention to geographic detail both intreguing and annoying. Since I within a few blocks of most of the action in the book, I smiled whenever the characters met at a restaurant I like, or frequent the grocery store that I do, but folks not from DC may find this distracting.