Review by New York Times Review
if I were in jail, George Pelecanos would be on my reading list, right up there with James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard, who are also favorites of the inmates in THE MAN WHO CAME UPTOWN (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $27). The guys in the general population at the Washington, D.C., jail also go for lady authors, thanks to Anna Kaplan, a roaming librarian the inmates call "Miss Anna." One loyal client, Michael Hudson, emerges from behind bars as a bona fide bibliophile. ("When he read a book, he was not locked up. He was free.") Back on the outside, Michael resolves to continue his reading habit, applying for his first library card, checking out some books and declaring himself "happy." But he owes people, and in this neighborhood promises and paybacks mean something. So when his major debtor needs a getaway driver for a robbery, Michael is his go-to guy. This is the way good people often get corrupted in Pelecanos's novels, paying their dues for favors received. They're also caught when they get greedy - like a private investigator named Phil Ornazian. Phil has a promising assignment tracking down the wild kids from D.C. who crashed a party in Potomac, Md., raped the teenage hostess and stole her mother's $50,000 bracelet. But then he gets tired of working for chump change and thinks he could be a big-time crook. Pelecanos's characters are prone to that kind of mistake, which is what makes them 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. 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. even IN peacetime, Bess Crawford, the intrepid battlefield nurse in Charles Todd's World War I-era mysteries, finds herself in situations as dire as those in any combat zone. "The war had ended, but not the suffering," she reflects, thinking of the wounded veterans now in her care. "No conquering heroes, these men. No victory parades for them." Rather, a 24-hour suicide watch. In A FORGOTTEN PLACE (Morrow, $27.99), Bess travels to a Godforsaken Welsh mining village on the Bristol Channel to check on one such veteran, Capt. Hugh Williams, an amputee racked by anger and despair. There she encounters yet another disaster, a rock slide that buries three cottages and their inhabitants under a wave of stones and mud. Stranded, Bess is put up by the captain and his attractive widowed sister-in-law, only to find herself confronted with the noxious atmosphere of a town that suspects Williams of having murdered his own brother. Lest readers succumb to the thick aura of calamity that clings to this sad story, Todd offers up charming scenes of focal life, including the spring lambing. Things in the village get a bit bloody, but, as far as I can tell, none of the little lambs is murdered. time was, the searches in many mystery novels involved lost or stolen items like emerald necklaces and state secrets. These days, sleuths all seem to be in pursuit of their identities. One such is Jessie Sloane, the neurasthenic heroine of Mary Kubica's WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT (Park Row, $26.99), who hasn't been able to sleep for eight days - or is it nine? As she keeps a tense death watch on her mother, Eden, Jessie fears that Eden might die without revealing who Jessie's father was. Eden's own story, told in chapters set 20 years in the past, focuses on her obsessive attempts to have a child and is far more moving than the alternating chapters devoted to her daughter's selfabsorbed quest. "I'm nothing," Eden berates herself, "if not a mother." What will happen when she realizes "I've become an addict really" and that children "are my fix"? CHRISTOPHER (KIT) COBB is an American war correspondent on assignment in France in 1915. In Robert Olen Butler's taut new thriller, PARIS IN THE DARK (Mysterious Press, $26), Kit is researching a feature about American civilians who volunteered to drive ambulances. That's a dangerous job in itself, taking him close to the front lines, but Kit is also a government agent, on the lookout for saboteurs among the ranks of refugees returning to Paris. Kit isn't infallible, wasting all kinds of time following a suspicious gent who turns out to be a betrayed husband in pursuit of his wife and her lover. Yet his adventures ensnare us in that cobwebbed state of mind when even the most innocent exchanges between strangers can acquire an ominous tone. Consider that boy talking about the pigs and chickens on his father's farm: Could he be stockpiling dynamite? Kit is given his orders - "Go find him and quietly kill him" - and sees plenty of action. Best, though, is Butler's feel for the black-andwhite-movie atmospherics of a war zone after hours: It's a thrill to follow Kit to German hangouts like Le Rouge et le Noir, where a password will get you in, but there's no guarantee you'll get out. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Pelecanos' first novel in five years (following The Double) proves well worth the wait. There are two protagonists here and two very different but related story lines. Anna Kaplan is the mobile librarian at the Washington, D.C., jail, where she is both readers' advisor and book-club leader to inmates ranging from juveniles to those in the Fifty and Older unit. Michael Hudson is one of Anna's protégés, a young African American who had never read a book before going to prison but who now wolfs down everything Anna feeds him, from Elmore Leonard to Edward P. Jones to Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Released from prison and returning to D.C. (going uptown in jail parlance), he dives into the pleasures of reading on the outside getting his own library card, buying a bookshelf but he also finds himself drawn back into the criminal life. Blackmailed by the bent investigator who engineered his release from prison, Michael is forced to serve as getaway driver for several vigilante-like strikes against drug dealers and pimps. 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. The fact that this time that elusive something more comes in the form of books will make this a novel to treasure for anyone who, like Michael, has been bitten by the reading bug. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pelecanos' TV work, on The Wire and Treme especially, will extend the reach of his latest novel, which will profit from extensive media exposure.--Bill Ott Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A love letter to the power of reading and small acts of kindness, this novel focuses on Michael Hudson, a young man who discovers his passion for reading while awaiting sentencing on a gun charge. The charges are eventually dropped, and Michael returns to his Washington, DC, home, resolved to stay out of prison and build a better life. The private detective who helped with his case has other ideas, and the tension of the novel is whether Michael can extricate himself from the crooked path the detective is planning for him. A quick read, but not slight, this story deftly touches on issues of friendship, gentrification, human trafficking, the resurgence of white supremacy, and what it means to cross a moral line. As with all novels by Pelecanos (The Cut; Right as Rain), the characters, even the minor ones, are intriguing and could be spun off into their own novels. As a bonus, through the actions of prison librarian Anna, the book also serves to provide excellent readers' advisory on a wide variety of fiction. VERDICT For readers who enjoy mysteries for their atmosphere and social commentary, this work does not disappoint.-Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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 anyoneanyone at all. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
