Soul Circus

Starred review from February 3, 2003
PI Derek Strange continues to prowl the South East quadrant of Washington, D.C., in Pelecanos's 11th novel (after Hell to Pay), which caroms madly and brilliantly between warring drug crews, opportunistic gun dealers and intimidated witnesses. Strange is hired by lawyers defending Granville Oliver, a murderous high-profile drug dealer now headed for death row. Strange has to locate a reliable witness who could earn Granville a commutation to life in prison. His best bet is Devra Stokes, the former girlfriend of Philip Wood, a deputy drug dealer who had worked under Oliver and testified against his boss. Stokes filed a brutality complaint against Wood, and Strange might be able to cast doubt on Wood's credibility, if he can only find the disgruntled ex-girlfriend. Strange is growing weary of the dejection in this neighborhood, of fatherless black boys who become gullible thugs who go on to orphan another generation. But the real crime, Pelecanos suggests, is the ready supply of firearms ("Simple as buying a carton of milk. And you didn't even need big money to do it... the community could chip in to buy one. What they called a neighborhood gun"). These guns, Pelecanos reminds us, are wielded by little more than children who want to impress their friends. Dewayne and Mario Durham, teenaged brothers trying to work their way up the ladder of thugdom, are prime examples, and Mario's blind allegiance to his smarter younger brother has terrible consequences. The ensemble cast also includes charismatic mercenary gun dealer Ulysses Foreman. Foreman and Strange are the oldest characters in the cast, and as the body count rises, Pelecanos keeps readers guessing as to who will bow first. This is vintage Pelecanos, with characters to remember, dialogue that rocks, an unsentimental, kinetic tableau of the D.C. underworld and, most of all, a conscience. (Mar. 4)Forecast:The paperback edition of Pelecanos's
Hell to Pay comes out in March. That book was the first to put him on the extended
New York Times bestseller list, and this one could be even bigger, propelled by a 20-city tour, national advertising and floor displays.

November 15, 2002
P.I. Strange protects a woman about to testify against a crime lord. The huge 20-city author tour suggests great expectations.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2002
Through 11 novels, Pelecanos has built a multifaceted fictional universe spanning more than 50 years but confined to the streets of Washington, D.C.'s, roughest neighborhoods. The characters in Pelecanos' world fall into distinct groups, but those groups are intermingled throughout individual books in Faulknerian fashion, with characters from the Nick Stefanos stories turning up in the Marcus Clay novels, or more recently, the Derek Strange-Terry Quinn series. That pattern continues here, in the third Strange-Quinn novel, with the appearance of Stefanos, hero of such early Pelecanos' novels as " Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go" (1995). Strange and Quinn once again find themselves struggling to save even one not-yet-lost young soul from the ravages of drugs and violence, but this time their knightly pursuits are undermined by a growing sense of moral ambivalence. Working as an investigator for the attorneys defending a gang leader faced with the death penalty, Strange questions whether his involvement in the case is justified by his position against capital punishment or whether he is merely trying to expunge his own guilt over his role in the death of the gang leader's father. Contrasting Strange's willingness to compromise with Quinn's potentially self-destructive hard-ass stance, Pelecanos expertly constructs both a gripping thriller and a tense internal drama. As always, his deeply textured portraits of the victims of poverty and violence add an almost Dickensian breadth to the novel. Throw in a shocking conclusion with far-reaching ramifications for the series, and you have one more superb installment in what has become a remarkably revealing portrait of urban life, encompassing both the broad sociopolitical questions and the most intimate matters of heart and mind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)