Shame the Devil

January 3, 2000
When the shooting stops on a blistering summer day at May's Pizza Parlor in Washington, D.C., in 1995, five people lie dead, a policeman is left crippled and robber Frank Farrow speeds off with his loot and not a trace of regret. But Farrow, the main villain in Pelecanos's fine new addition to his hard-boiled lineup, still isn't satisfied. He wants to return to finish off the injured cop, who killed Farrow's brother during the shoot-out. Farrow doesn't anticipate, however, the burning desire for revenge harbored by the family and friends of those butchered in the notorious pizza bloodbath. Chief among them is 50-ish Dimitri Karras, whose five-year-old son died when he was mowed down by the getaway vehicle Farrow was driving. Now, three years later, Karras is just getting his life back together, much like the other survivors, all of whom meet regularly to share their grief and soothe their torment. By chance, Karras teams up with Nick Stephanos, a freelance investigator who finds out Farrow is back in town to exact his twisted vengeance. Stephanos tries to dissuade Karras from tracking down Farrow, but even he understands the urge for retaliation. Karras and Stephanos, who have starred in several of Pelecanos's earlier books (King Suckerman; The Sweet Forever), deepen considerably as characters in this hard-driving story of heartache, Stephanos's adjustment to the new-found maturity of middle age and Dmitri's search for some small relief in revenge. Set against a backdrop of greasy-spoon diners, church basements, dive bars and sparsely furnished apartments, the narrative is unsettlingly harsh yet captivatingly tender, the gritty back-and-forth of everyday urban life vividly etched. 11-city author tour.

September 15, 1999
A gunman intent on revenge rampages through this latest from Golden Dagger nominee Pelecanos.

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 1999
Pelecanos began his Marcus Clay^-Dimitri Karras novels with "King Suckerman" (1997), set in 1976; then came "The Sweet Forever" (1998), set 10 years later; now we pick up the story of these aging childhood friends after nearly another decade has passed, with Clay and Karras settling into the quiet pleasures of middle age. Then a restaurant robbery goes bad, the entire staff is murdered, the gunman's brother is killed, and Karras' toddler son, crossing the wrong street at the wrong time, is run over by the speeding getaway car. Three years later Karras is adrift, his marriage over, his only solace coming in weekly meetings with the families of the shooting victims. Into this simmering pot Pelecanos stirs the killer, Frank Farrow, returned to Washington and determined to avenge the death of his brother. This central story is intertwined with the latest developments in the troubled life of Nick Stefanos, hero of several of the author's early novels, who finds Dimitri a job at his neighborhood bar and ultimately comes to his aid in the showdown with Farrow. Bringing together threads from all his previous work, including "The Big Blowdown" (1996), which starred Karras' father and Stefanos' grandfather, Pelecanos delivers a sort of summarizing chapter to what has become a magnificent serial novel depicting life on inner-city streets in the postwar era. Remarkably, nearly every character in the ongoing saga, from the central figures to the flamboyantly evil criminals, is cut from whole cloth, each a figure of complexity and ambiguity. Although Clay makes only a cameo appearance here, he remains the moral center of Pelecanos' universe: a black man who, through luck and courage, has avoided the myriad potholes arrayed in his path and somehow reached the seemingly chimeric goal of living an ordinary life. Stefanos and Karras, left to fight demons both internal and external, have still to complete their Odyssean journeys. For mythic grandeur grounded in the gritty truth of the street, few contemporary novelists can top Pelecanos. ((Reviewed November 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)