Rating: 
Summary: i wish i could give it 3.5 stars
Review: this is my first pelecanos novel and i am ordering more immediately after i post this review. the strengths of the book are really why you'd read it: slick dialogue, strong sense of place, graphic descriptions of violence, and a well-developed cast of charming characters (both heroes and anti-heroes). those of you familiar with the DC/MD area will enjoy pelecanos' treatment of location, especially if you weren't there in the 70s but wish you were.why three stars? mostly because pelecanos relies on cheap morality toward the end. the moral revelations, or maybe evolutions, seem like jokes. they're just so obvious and unimaginative. i don't want to post a spoiler, but the body count at the end is painfully predictable. on the plus side, pelecanos has a great gift for dialogue and characterization. while it's often more entertaining to watch bad guys develop, the ambiguity of the characters early on keeps you interested in the entire cast. everything is tight until the last fifth or so. at that point the good guys arc and it seems canned and facile. as you can see, the crude moralizing bothered me, but that doesn't mean that i wouldn't recommend the book. i thoroughly enjoyed it overall and look forward to more of pelecanos' work.
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