I recently finished George P's latest, The Night Gardener,
and it is terrific.
I had just moved to DC when The Sweet Forever came out and
after it blew me away, I chain-read everything from A Firing
Offense on up through The Sweet Forever Again.
Though I had I read Ellroy, Connelly, Parker, Mosley, Block
and a few others, it was the Pelecanos books that led to me
seeking out all the writers I've come to love since then;
going back and reading Chandler, Goodis, etc. and,
eventually, finding this lovely forum of Mr. Denton's.
So I am a fan, and admittedly have blind spots to some of the
criticisms of Pelecanos that Brian and others have laid out
in the past, but I flat out loved The Night Gardener. Drama
City didn't grab me all that much, so it may sound backhanded
to call the new one a return to form, but it is as good as
anything Pelecanos has written.
This isn't a quibble, but it warrants mentioning that some of
the plot is set in motion when the character Dan Holliday,
after sleeping off a bender in his car, wakes up to discover
a dead body of a young man. Sounds familiar...
Chris
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