#3 George Pelecanos...(Top 10 Crime Fiction Writer Series)

If the next writer on the list - James Lee Burke - has one ear tilted to a whispering angel then George Pelecanos has his to the ground.  His characters are as true and earthbound as any I’ve read – they speak in a way that sounds right and they act in a way that feels right. 

​Dave Robicheaux may be a little too good to be true and Jack Taylor may be a little too bad to be true but Nick Stefanos and Derek Strange are on the nose. I knew these people. 

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I’m from well north of Pelecanos’ stomping ground, Washington DC, but these are guys that I knew.  The kind of guys who were the first in their family to go to university - too smart and too self-aware to be OK with the 11 to 7 shift at the auto parts plant but deeply suspicious of privilege in any form…suspicious enough that they struggled with hard-earned good fortune.  If they stayed on one side of the line they ended up angry because they were smarter than their boss and if they slid across the line they wondered if they had sold out.

And Pelecanos’ books are all about those characters – rarely are you trying to figure out what is going on in a Pelecanos book, instead you are trying to figure out how what just happened will affect the characters.  The plot of a Pelecanos book simply provides heat and light - the heat that twists and shapes the characters and breaks and forms the bonds among characters…and the light to illuminate what’s left behind.   

It’s George’s characters and what he does with them that push him to third on the list.  He doesn’t write magical sentences – there are few turns of phrase that leave me wanting to quote them – he’s not a poet.  But he still manages to come third.  Why?  It’s because he writes about the pain and the joy of the human condition – but with no spiritual sheen.  Just that the sun on your skin can be a salve, that a long pull followed by a cold glass against your forehead can be as good as any answered prayer, that every last drop of juice is right in front of us…in the dirt, in the air, in the face across from ours and that any higher meaning does an injustice to the word ‘higher’.  God’s in the wind… if he was ever here.

Pelecanos has an unerring knack for knowing what to show us, what to reveal.  Maybe that’s why he does good TV.  When the child, Jackie Karras, is hit by the car early in Shame The Devil, Pelecanos writes,
Frank Farrow gave the cracked windshield a spray of fluid and hit the wipers.  Blood swept away and gathered at the edges in two pink vertical lines.

There is nothing special about the words or the meter or the structure of those sentences.  They are plain and unadorned.  But I think there are very few writers that would have thought to show us this -  who would have been so ‘in the scene’ that they could see it this clearly…and that showing this to the reader gave us almost all we needed to know about Farrow.

And this short throwaway in Soul Circus where Derek Strange is listening to an exchange between a DJ and a listener,

“Thanks for rollin’ with a brother”
 and she replies
“Thanks for letting a sister roll.”

And that tells Strange what he loves about his hometown -  a small soul kindness between strangers.  It’s an exchange I’m not sure another writer on the planet would have shared – and it sticks with me.  It tells me something about Derek Strange, a little bit about George Pelecanos, a little about me and a little bit about why, if you’re really fucking lucky, life’s a gift.

There Is no more obvious descendent of Elmore Leonard than Pelecanos – his dialogue is always snare-tight and ride-sharp.  The scene in Soul Circus where Strange and Quinn talk for the last time,

“Terry” said Strange, holding his arm. “Thanks for your help today, man.  You know I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“No problem.”
“Go home,” said Strange staring into Quinn’s eyes.
Quinn pulled his arm free. “I will.”
“Always interesting with you around, man.”
Quinn  smiled. “You too.”

This is how most of the guys I knew, as a younger man, talked – trying to say something but not quite able.
And then there’s the music – it might not be everybody’s cup of tea but when I open a Pelecanos book I also flip open Spotify so I can listen to what I’m reading about.  Man, I forgot I loved the Spinners and never knew there was a band called Nation of Ulysses.  The references to music capture a time and a type – the 70’s and early 80’s and guys who wished they were as good as the music they loved. 

There is no individual book that sets Pelecanos above people behind him on this list.  A big part of what sets him apart is his consistency. It’s not that every book is equally good – even the best writers don’t hit the same high bar every time but every one of Pelecanos’ books seems to have been written with something at stake – nothing feels like just a story, just entertainment. They always feel like they matter, that somebody’s life and soul is at stake.  Maybe George’s.