The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Finished George Pelecanos's Hard Revolution last week, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while now. Pelecanos is one of the most underrated novelists out there -- though you'll find his novels largely shelved in the "Crime" section of your local bookstore, he's earned rave reviews from the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Harlan Ellison (neither of whom is a stranger to the limitations of a genre tag). Although his novels can be divided up based on their protagonists, they share a series of recurring characters, particularly Nick Stefanos, a sometime private detective with a fondness for punk rock and an ongoing battle with alcohol. And their setting is uniform: Washington, D.C.
Hard Revolution is a prelude to the three novels that precede it, featuring a middle-aged detective named Derek Strange. Hard Revolution finds Strange as a young man, a promising police officer in late-Sixties D.C. Pelecanos has said that he doesn't consider this to be a crime novel -- and it's not, although crime does factor heavily into the plot, as does violence in many forms.
At first, this novel seems largely disconnected to the trilogy that precedes it. And slowly, we see connections: first, Strange's issues with monogamy, which play a not insubstantial role in the trilogy; and later, we come to realize that we're seeing something else, an event alluded to in Soul Circus (chronologically speaking, the latest of the Strange novels), and we come to realize just how much this is the story of Derek Strange's formative years -- and just how that's left him scarred. And as the book ends, its scenes of a burning Washington summon up the chaotic image that concludes Soul Circus -- and the preceding novel feels even more like a tragedy than it had before.
***
Plus, Pelecanos is a Q and Not U fan -- what's not to love?
Hard Revolution is a prelude to the three novels that precede it, featuring a middle-aged detective named Derek Strange. Hard Revolution finds Strange as a young man, a promising police officer in late-Sixties D.C. Pelecanos has said that he doesn't consider this to be a crime novel -- and it's not, although crime does factor heavily into the plot, as does violence in many forms.
At first, this novel seems largely disconnected to the trilogy that precedes it. And slowly, we see connections: first, Strange's issues with monogamy, which play a not insubstantial role in the trilogy; and later, we come to realize that we're seeing something else, an event alluded to in Soul Circus (chronologically speaking, the latest of the Strange novels), and we come to realize just how much this is the story of Derek Strange's formative years -- and just how that's left him scarred. And as the book ends, its scenes of a burning Washington summon up the chaotic image that concludes Soul Circus -- and the preceding novel feels even more like a tragedy than it had before.
***
Plus, Pelecanos is a Q and Not U fan -- what's not to love?
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