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Summary: I guess I didn't get it....
Review: This book failed to hold my attention as much as it seems it enraptured the other reviewers on this page. I found Pelecanos to be a good writer, with strong characters and plot but something was missing. I really enjoy urban crime stories and I am still devoted to Richard Price whose "Freedomland" and "Clockers" in my opinion, are both much better than "Sweet Forever". I know many people may disagree with my reasoning but hey, that's why we all have our own point of view...
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Summary: Another great Pelecanos book.
Review: This book is great. The way that Pelecanos describes the cocaine trade and the people that are involved is startling. Also, Pelacanos gives vivid discriptions that capture the beautiful and brutal sides of the nations capital. The way that the story unfolds is incredable. As is the way that it is told. "The Sweet Forever" is a awesome story that has the usual cast of players. If you like action, and I mean non-stop action this book is for you.
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Summary: What else would you be looking for in a crime novel?
Review: This is a flat out terrific book. Pelecanos weaves an intriguing story about a search for some stolen drug money, a battle for control of a neighborhood and a number of characters looking for a different direction for their lives. The scene descriptions are vivid and the character development is superb. Exactly what else would you be looking for in a crime novel?As a confirmed Pelecanos fan now after reading several of his books, I'd recommend a couple of things to anyone considering reading his work. First, if you like tough, gritty crime novels, definitely read his work. It is excellent. Second, I think you're better off by reading the old stuff before the newer work. The reason for this is that a number of the characters appear in multiple books and if you know a character will show up in a later work as an older person, you know they didn't get killed in the earlier work.
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Summary: What else would you be looking for in a crime novel?
Review: This is a flat out terrific book. Pelecanos weaves an intriguing story about a search for some stolen drug money, a battle for control of a neighborhood and a number of characters looking for a different direction for their lives. The scene descriptions are vivid and the character development is superb. Exactly what else would you be looking for in a crime novel? As a confirmed Pelecanos fan now after reading several of his books, I'd recommend a couple of things to anyone considering reading his work. First, if you like tough, gritty crime novels, definitely read his work. It is excellent. Second, I think you're better off by reading the old stuff before the newer work. The reason for this is that a number of the characters appear in multiple books and if you know a character will show up in a later work as an older person, you know they didn't get killed in the earlier work.
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Summary: First Time Pelecanos reader
Review: This is my first time reading a pelecanos book, not even sure why I chose to read it. I have to admit, that I read the first 100 pages, sporadically over a week. I really was not being pulled in by the plot, but I wanted to keep reading because of the characters. They are realistic, in language, habits and all have depth. The characters do stay with you long after the book. The ending may have been a little too clean, but it was still realistic. The details about the music and the streets seemd to take away from the story. It was just too much detail. It was DC in 1988, so the backdrop of a Presedential election seems to be completely ignored, considering how much detail he put into other areas. The Len Bias backdrop was a great backstory. i definitely want to read mroe from Pelecanos.
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Summary: Flat out Pelecanos' best!
Review: This is one is a direct hit (with brass knuckles) to the gut and to the heart. I know it's a cliche, but this guy can really write! Better still, with this one he blows away anything written by Lehane or Connelly, both of whose blurbs are to be found on the back. While most of the gritty action here takes place on the unforgiving streets of our nation's capitol, (the "inside the beltway" that you'll never see on C-Span), Pelecanos also gives us piercing insights into the lives of the working stiffs and semi-yuppies who fell under the spell of cocaine during that era (I was one). I saw my own thoughts leap out at me when Karras contemplates how even the "idea" of coke could dominate your day-to-day existence. You know, you would think about your blow, how much you had left, how long it would last, how you couldn't wait to get home for a hit, etc. In Karras, the author captures perfectly the weariness of the soul that is the end result of being endlessly slung between the extremes of black depression and frenzied enthusiasm cause by cocaine. Pelecanos himself plays havoc with our emotions in this compelling story. We are driven to rage by a scene in which a teenage drug "enforcer" displays psychotic glee as he brutally murders two 11-year old boys in a grimy back alley. The author does not let us off so easily however, when the horror dawns on us that the two young victims could just as easily, in a few short years, have grown into the persona of their remorseless executioner. Tough stuff from Pelecanos, but overall, a book that you will not quickly forget.
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Summary: A Glock with a manual safety? Only in a Pelecanos novel!
Review: This was quite an enjoyable read and the author nearly succeeded in enrapturing me in the events situated in 1988 Washington, D.C. But as his tale came to its climax, he had the Monroe guy off the safety on his Glock ... oops. Sorry, but the Glock has no manual safety. While the author liberally spiced up this novel with details that helped keep my interest, I expected him to be accurate. That mistake with the firearm just killed the story for me.
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Summary: Another fine novel in Pelecanos' generational urban tapestry
Review: Writers dislike being compared to one another, but readers find the shorthand of similarities helpful when searching for new authors to read. Take the hard edged tone and flare for local color of James Crumley, give him an ethnic Greek background and raise him in Washington, D.C. and you will discover George P. Pelecanos, one of the finest but least recognized writers of crime fiction in America today. One can only hope that The Sweet Forever, Pelecanos' seventh novel, corrects that latter fact. Think of a novel of suspense set in Washington and grand monuments and politics come to mind. That is, after all, all that most of us know about our nation's capital. But Washington is a real city as well, a city apart from national politics where ordinary people of all sorts live and work and die. This is Pelecanos' Washington, and he knows it well. His characters do not live at the Watergate or work on Capitol Hill. They live in neighborhoods never seen on the nightly! news and work in diners and discount appliance stores, listen to local bands in bars no tourists ever stumble into and, on occasion, become embroiled in the 'meat and potatos' crimes that serve as the stock in trade of mysteries. The Sweet Forever embroils Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay, recurring Pelecanos characters, in a cocaine ring's search for stolen money. Cops on the take and the already frightening lives of children on the pre-crack D.C. streets of the 1980s intertwine the plot line against the backdrop of the NCAA basketball tournament the year U. Maryland's Len Bias enthrawlled the city's many round ball fans. The pacing is brisk, the characterizations and dialogue believable, and the net effect is a thoroughly enjoyable read. (Non-fans of basketball may have to ask a friend why the novel ends as it does, but this is a small point.) The book does suffer, however, from underediting -- a weakness of several of his earlier novels. Someone should have insisted ! on deleting the incessant naming of some particular musicia! n playing some particular song from some particular album in scene after scene after scene. It is a tedious self-indulgence of Pelecanos that distracts from his otherwise strong writing. Even so, Pelecanos deserves a wider readership with The Sweet Forever and serious consideration from the folks who pass out the Edgars. Aside from changing for the better readers' sense of my home town (There, I've admitted my bias!), Pelecanos will engage and entertain those readers with The Sweet Forever, and then with each other fine offering in his generational, urban tapestry.
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