I just finished SOUL CIRCUS last night, and I thought it was
pretty good, my favorite of the three Strange/Quinn books.
There's a few preachy stretches, but generally Pelecanos
shows you the results of gun violence instead of telling you
how bad it is.
I haven't enjoyed this series as much as his earlier work,
though, and I think I've finally figured out why. The
"heroes" in Pelecanos' earlier works were sometime
irresponsible (as we all are), whether it was getting drunk
at a bad time, cheating on their wives/girlfriends, picking
fights they couldn't win, etc. But as the DC Quartet went
along, the upright
(though not uptight) Marcus Clay sort of won the battle with
Dmitri Karras, convincing him to give up all that.
One that Pelecanos still does as well as he ever did is write
bad guys. All the characters come across as real people,
never as stock villains. And he still writes with the same
convincing authority that he always has. I just sort of hope
he writes more about his misspent youth than his sober middle
age.
Graham
------------------ http://www.BleekerBooks.com
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