Drama City - George Pelecanos

Drama City (2005) is one of Pelecanos's slice of life stories, set on the dark side of Washington DC. The title is meant to be a play on the two drama masks, comedy and tragedy, but there is no comedy here. It's all tragedy and, as in the classical model, it is all inevitable. It is inevitable that Lorenzo Brown, ex-con going straight as dog police with the Humane Society, gets drawn back to his criminal past. It is inevitable that Rachel Lopez, his probation officer, pays the price for either her free and easy sex life or her commitment to her clients. It is inevitable that it is what happens to Rachel that forces Lorenzo back to crime - the only thing that's not inevitable is whether his slip is an one-off or permanent.


Pelecanos is best known in the UK for his collaboration with David Simon on The Wire and Treme. What Pelecanos brought to the table was his fluency in 'street'. He conjures the speech of African American gang-bangers pitch-perfectly. His characters are deftly drawn and they carry the plot with an easy, streetwise lope. Pelecanos is an absolute master of his genre. You either like it or you don't. Personally, I love it.

The Cut - George Pelecanos

As usual, I'm reading the series the wrong way round.  This is the second Spero Lucas novel I've read in the last month or so, but this is his debut.  Luckily, Pelecanos is such a good writer that it makes no difference which way you read them.

Anyway Afghan vet and retriever of lost property Spero is asked by hippie defence lawyer Tom Petersen to find evidence to help the case of an underage driver who has crashed and killed his friend.   Success leads him to the boy's father, another of Petersen's clients, awaiting trial for dealing marijuana.  Here Pelecanos joins his friend and colleague David Simon's crusade to show the stupidity of America's War on Drugs - filling up prisons with nonviolent offenders.

Anyway, someone is stealing the dealer's deliveries and he asks Spero to recover the goods for his customary forty percent cut.  From this point on the ripples of the conspiracy spread wider and wider and the violence ratchets remorselessly up.

The Derek Strange series never really hooked me (Strange gets a witty nod in The Cut, almost an acknowledgement of shared DNA) but I find Spero Lucas properly compelling.  Perhaps it's the way he draws in his former comrades, now shattered one way or another.  The Afghan conflict, right or wrong, adds depth and tone which really chimes with me.