RARA-AVIS: Hell to Pay

From: Larson, Craig ( Craig.Larson@tsjc.cccoes.edu)
Date: 07 Mar 2002


I read George Pelecanos' new book a couple of weeks back (it was a McNaughton title at the library where I work--sometimes it seems like we're getting these four or five days before they show up in bookstores). I took it home on a Friday afternoon and could not put it down until I finished, about midnight. I hate rushing through a new book like that, but sometimes with favorite authors, I find I can't stop myself.

It was a very good book, one of his best. I still think _The Sweet Forever_ is better, but this might come in a close second, and the story is a similar one, though set in the present day. Derek Strange and Terry Quinn sponsor a neighborhood football team for young kids, to try to draw them away from violence and drug dealing and other negative pursuits. When one of their more promising young talents is killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, they get involved in a search for the killer. This is heartbreaking stuff and Pelecanos' gift is in showing that even the killers, kids who got sidetracked, are human, too, with good things in their lives (one of the trio has a soft spot for his dog, which he's been training for dog fights). Pelecanos has a message as strong as any writer, but he doesn't let it get in the way of telling his story.

Craig Larson Trinidad, CO

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