Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: It took me a while to get on the George Pelecanos bandwagon, but with "Hell to Pay" I am in the fan club.He is a writer of substance in the Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Lee Child, James W. Hall category. "Hell to Pay" is the second Derek Strange/Terry Quinn novel. It is set in the murkier regions of Washington. The malaise of the Washington the media does not cover is addressed and exposed. A terrific cat and mouse that produces surprising allies. Every guess you will make will turn out wrong. The soundtrack from WPGC reverberates throughout the book, and the pop culture references are everywhere. A spectacular series, not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Pelecanos delivers again
Review: Just when I thought George P. had written as good of a P.I. novel as can be written (Right As Rain) he sets a new standard of excellence with Hell To Pay. As always Pelecanos' vivid descriptions of downtown D.C. make you feel like you are there, and his dialog is second to none. If realism is what you want in crime fiction with no sugar coating it does not get much better than Pelecanos.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best of the year
Review: One of today's finest writers of crime fiction is George Pelecanos. He has previously written the "Washington quartet"-- a group of books, actually historical mysteries, that took place over a number of years and shared characters. His latest series concerns PIs Derek Strange and Terry Quinn. Strange started Strange Investigations and hired Quinn, a retired police officer. I considered the first book in the series, RIGHT AS RAIN, to be one of the best books of last year.
Several separate plots are occurring simultaneously. Strange and Quinn are hired to recover a fourteen year old girl working as a prostitute for Worldwide Wilson, a hardened operative. One of the problems is that the girl does not want to go home. Another plot concerns three homicidal young men who want to knock off a man who owes them money. The man is an uncle to one of the boys playing on Strange's youth football team that he coaches. When the boy becomes involved, Strange and Quinn want vengeance.
HELL TO PAY is another sterling example of what makes George Pelecanos one of the best. He is a master of characters and dialogue. They reflect the highly realistic milieu of the nation's capital where this series takes place. He successfully balances these superb characterizations with a truly riveting plot. The book is also just the right size. Other practitioners of the crime fiction art would do very well to read and learn from this very, very fine writer. One of the best of the year.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best of the year
Review: One of today's finest writers of crime fiction is George Pelecanos. He has previously written the "Washington quartet"-- a group of books, actually historical mysteries, that took place over a number of years and shared characters. His latest series concerns PIs Derek Strange and Terry Quinn. Strange started Strange Investigations and hired Quinn, a retired police officer. I considered the first book in the series, RIGHT AS RAIN, to be one of the best books of last year.
Several separate plots are occurring simultaneously. Strange and Quinn are hired to recover a fourteen year old girl working as a prostitute for Worldwide Wilson, a hardened operative. One of the problems is that the girl does not want to go home. Another plot concerns three homicidal young men who want to knock off a man who owes them money. The man is an uncle to one of the boys playing on Strange's youth football team that he coaches. When the boy becomes involved, Strange and Quinn want vengeance.
HELL TO PAY is another sterling example of what makes George Pelecanos one of the best. He is a master of characters and dialogue. They reflect the highly realistic milieu of the nation's capital where this series takes place. He successfully balances these superb characterizations with a truly riveting plot. The book is also just the right size. Other practitioners of the crime fiction art would do very well to read and learn from this very, very fine writer. One of the best of the year.
Rating:
Summary: D.C.'s Other Department of Justice
Review: P.I. Derek strange is back with Janine and her son Lionel as well as Terry Quinn from "Right As Rain" who is helping him coach Pee Wee football and doing some investigating on the side. It opens with bad guy Garfield "Death" Potter at a pit bull fight (he's so bad he later shoots the losing dog) browbeating a guy to tell him where to find Lorenze Wilder who owes him $100. Strange appears when he meets Susan Tracy and Karen Bagley, two ex-cops now running a detective agency that finds runaways and helps hookers. Tracy and Bagley hire Quinn to track down a 14-year-old runaway who is controlled by pimp Worldwide Wilson. Terry screws up the snatch, Susan bails him out and they become a hot item in the aftermath. On a parallel story line, Potter and co. kill Lorenze and his nephew Joe on their way home from Pee Wee football practice. Lorenze's sister has been raising Joe on her own, never telling him who his father is. He's a force that will figure into the rest of the story. Though 2/3 of D.C. homicides go unsolved, ther are enough clues and enough interest to get Joe Wilder's killers. Strange gets to Potter before the cops do. At the same time Terry is going after Worldwide who beat up Stella the working girl who tipped them to the runaway. The two parallel showdowns are a stretch, but Pelecanos has a great way of letting justice be done. In the end the reader knows what happened to whom and is still left to speculate how Pelecanos expects the criminal justic system to clean things up. Enough loose ends for a sequel? I hope so! Pelecanos never disappoints.
Rating: 
Summary: I can't bring myself to pick up another book by him
Review: There are very few authors who have that result after having read one of their books. He hits the winners list. The story dragged. The switching of viewpoints can be wonderful if done properly. This wasn't one of them. I kept feeling like slapping the main characters and saying "OH just get on with it." The feel of the book was disjointed before I started to skip parts due to sheer boredom. What really suprised me was skipping didn't hurt the feel one bit. The disjointed rating stayed the same. Somehow I don't think that can be classified as good writing. The characters didn't save the day and involve me enough to make me want to read. I felt like slapping the author when I had to skip what became boring recitations of all the songs he knows. I pray it is all he knows. I would hate to think there is more in store for us. There is a LOT of difference in listening to music, finding it in a movie sound track and reading about it. Save it for the movie if it ever makes it. Read Vachss for how it is suppose to be done and spare us Please. The story just didn't hold together well enough to avoid me starting the old skip this. Even with all the skipping I did I found I didn't lose much. That says a lot. I looked at his new one and ran far far away to writers I know I enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: These days there are a handful of names working the hardboiled/detective/cop genre that you can trust: James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, and Michael Connelly top that list. One name that has hovered around the edges has always been George P. Pelecanos. For Pelecanos to be on the fringe of this group is criminal. Pelecanos is hands down the finest writer working the genre. The question then is why most have never heard of him? I have my thoughts on this subject, but I'll be kind and sum it up to poor marketing on his previous titles. "Hell to Pay" is Pelecanos' tenth novel and second to feature the team of private investigator Derek Strange and his sometime employee/partner Terry Quinn. As with all of his previous work "Hell to Pay" is centered around the streets of Washington DC. Not the well-lit and clean DC streets that the tourists frequent, but the real DC streets, the streets that are filled with the thrown away and the unwanted. Streets where the wrong look or wrong walk can get you killed. If you think that the DC that Pelecanos operates in has gotten kinder or gentler since last year's "Right as Rain", you're off the mark. "Hell to Pay" begins in the open wound that is the inner city ghetto. Pelecanos introduces us to three of the main characters as they listen to DMX, pack heat, smoke dope, and drink as they prepare to head out to a dogfight. The first victim to fall in Pelecanos' latest is one Lorenze Wilder, killed for trying to pull a small change burn in a drug deal. The amount of cash lost is of no account, however this is DC and if word gets out that you've been played once, your business will be history, so Wilder goes down. If Wilder would have been murdered alone it would have hardly registered a mention in the press, but Lorenze was not alone. In the car with him was his young nephew Joe who had just left football practice, catching a ride with his uncle instead of his usual ride, his coach, Derek Strange. Strange struggles with this murder. As he fights with himself over the death of Joe Wilder his lover/secretary calls him on his infidelity. Strange's relationship with her as well as her teenage son becomes strained. The life of Derek Strange has begun to unravel when he steps into the home of a noted DC drug lord who is seeking his help. Strange listens to his proposition and is forced into a decision. Does he do what his heart tells him is right or does he follow his head. Strange now finds himself in a situation where he feels that either decision will be the wrong one. While Strange is involved in his case Quinn has taken on the task of finding a young girl that has been lost to the streets. In the process the hotheaded Quinn as well as his young informant run afoul of the girls pimp, Worldwide Wilson. And while the love life of his partner Strange begins to deteriorate, Quinn falls for one of the women that has put him on this case. From this point we see the main characters all heading for inevitable violence. Pelecanos exposes the sad truth that on the street and in the life all you have is your name and rep. Whether you are a street hustler or a kingpin, if either of those gets tarnished or questioned, you are one step away from being replaced by the next young stud. Pelecanos also points out that folks in that life often face hard choices in regard to their own crews. It's a hard world and it takes a hard man to survive and the hardest as well as the weakest will struggle to survive at any cost. Fans of Pelecanos know to expect a violent ending to his books and "Hell to Pay" is no different, but instead of the gunfights of his past novels, Pelecanos goes old school with some bloody fisticuffs. "Hell to Pay" does end with a few twists, and Pelecanos uses the last few pages of this novel to set up the next tale of Strange and Quinn. Pelecanos fills his books with emotion and dirty realism. His writing is not overblown or forced; it flows simply and engages the reader immediately. As with all his other novels, it is hard to put this one down once you begin. Pelecanos is a criminally under appreciated writer, and anyone missing the boat on his work is truly missing
out on one of the most talented writers of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Hell to listen to
Review: This audio book, like many of those by "Brilliance Audio" is difficult to listen to...especially while driving. I listen to a book a week, and the only ones I've encountered with bad quality are by this company. The sound quality is bad, and the dialect impossible to understand. Buy the book, skip the audio.
Rating:
Summary: A Compelling View of "the other Washington D.C."
Review: This gritty, hard-boiled crime novel is a little hard to take--I almost didn't make it past the street-tough, violent young perps in the first chapter. But I am glad I presevered for this look that most of us who live in D.C.--I have lived in the D.C. area all of my life--don't see from the suburbs. There is just enough recognizable in the streets, bars, landmarks and radio stations that you know Pelecanos is a D.C. native who knows what goes on in the streets. P.I. Derek Strange teams up with his white friend and former D.C. cop Terry Quinn to work on several cases. There are many interesting story lines--one missing girl turned prostitute case from the P.I firm, a plot of revenge on two levels--one for "dissing" a street punk and the other for a senseless killing and very personal stories of working with a Pee Wee football team to give neighborhood kids a chance and for Strange and Quinn trying to redeem their own personal lives. After learning more about Pelecanos, I found out that Derek Strange and other characters have drawn on many aspects of his life--from helping his father in a greasy spoon diner in D.C., to his profiling of a shoe clerk--an occupation he lived for several years--to his frequenting many of the hangouts of Strange and Quinn. Pelecanos paints a very vivid picture of the hopelessness, crime and the allure of the drug trade for youths with few options and a very short life expectancy. There is hope in his story--through the work of volunteers with football and other youth activities, we see that there is a way out for some of the kids if they choose it. Hell to Pay is a grim story, but I am glad he told it and I read it. I plan to go back and read the first story of Strange and Quinn, "Right as Rain" as well as his early novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Hell To Pay brings a sense of realness.
Review: This is the second book of Pelecanos' that I have read, the first being Right as Rain. We are introduced to the mean streets of DC in these novels. For those of us who grew up in or around the city, we are given a special treat. These places just resonate for us.
Why is Pelecanos so captivating a writer? Real conversations and situations occuring between real people. Never is the reader left with a feeling of forcedness. Also we are given both sides of the coin and are allowed to make our own decisions. We come across a drug dealer who had it bad from the start and a shoe-shine man who had it about the same but decided to better himself. The overriding theme here is personal responsibility despite what you are given in life. The struggle is not for nothing. I have come to realize that the most beautiful thing about living in America is the American Dream. True, some are born with the deck stacked against them but that should make their need to succeed all the more necessary. There is nothing more disheartening than the stories of those that don't make it. I thought that it was supposed to be No Child Left Behind; well they keep getting left behind when funds that could go to help them go to Iraq.
The plot of this story is about Joe Wilder. The rest is just important as it is reflected in his story. A young black kid who is going to make it big and be somebody in this life. Joe Wilder is all heart.
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