Penzler Pick, February 2000: Just as Robert B. Parker and Dennis Lehane have made Boston their own and Los Angeles has been the distinct province of a lineage leading from Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald to Michael Connelly and Robert Crais, so is George Pelecanos the storyteller who's put Washington, D.C., on the noir map. Once considered "the best-kept secret in crime fiction" by his peers, he is now fast leaving behind those days of strictly word-of-mouth fame and cult status.

Telling it like he sees it, and looking fearlessly into those dark, forgotten alleyways that lay too far beyond the corridors of power to make it into any guidebooks, Pelecanos conjures up a gritty, ghostly Washington of working-class neighborhoods and aging suburbs and shoots it through with chillingly unpredictable menace. Most Washington natives probably wouldn't recognize the place--but they couldn't stop trying either, knowing that they've at least glimpsed (out of the corners of their eyes) those environs where a Pelecanos character is most at home.

In Shame the Devil, we find a society of grieving men and women connected by loss, betrayal, the need for revenge, and the shadowy presence of evil. As in other Pelecanos tales, the heroes are not easily identified, love is a coming together of wounded souls, and answers are found where least expected. In the aftermath of a botched armed robbery, a fair number of lives have been thrown into a downward spiral. The problems, however, come on faster and with more fury once the status quo sustaining the survivors has been breached by an ill-wishing and unwanted addition to their little group.

Here are two favorite moments. In one, protagonist Dimitri Karras asks the name of a fellow bar patron. Hearing that he's called Happy, Karras comments that he doesn't look too happy. The answer: "He's pacing himself." The other: we hear the thoughts of the sociopathic villain: "Some believed that incarceration was a mark of failure, but Frank disagreed. Prison was an essential element of any career criminal's education."

With Shame the Devil, Pelecanos solidifies his position among the elite of the brilliant coterie of young noir writers who are creating the emerging classics of the genre. --Otto Penzler


From Publishers Weekly
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. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The setting is Washington, DC, where everybody lies, cheats, and steals, but the characters of Pelecanos's (King Suckerman) new novel would have a tough time wangling an invite to the White House. This time the robbery of a pizza parlor in 1995 leads to the death of an innocent boy, the son of Dimitri Karras, back from earlier efforts by Pelecanos. The plot is the very leisurely working out of the aftermath of that robbery. Much of the action (and talk) center on The Spot, a neighborhood bar/gathering place where Karras gets a job as a dishwasher. The talkAwhich, with Pelecanos's ear for dialog, is goodAmoves from family to neighborhood and sometimes even to the Pizza Parlor murders. A bit of Dashiell Hammett as filtered through the lens of Spike Lee, Shame the Devil can be recommended to anyone who fancies neighborhood stories exchanged on the stoop at sunset. Those looking for a fast-paced page-turner might pass. For urban and larger public libraries.-ABob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review, 2/6/00
"Pelacanos is one of those dangerous writers who aren't afraid to take risks..."


Village Voice, 2/15/00
"By taking his time, by working seemingly tangential subplots smoothly into the main story, Pelecanos finds an extra layer of resonance...this novel dares to escape the genre straitjacket and defer its violence to just before the point of endurance. It's a thriller with an ethnic accent, brains, balls, and everything in between."


From AudioFile
A botched robbery at a DC pizzeria leaves six people--including the driver of the getaway car--dead. For the next three years, the people who lost friends and loved ones in the incident struggle to heal from the tragedy. Then the killers return to DC to avenge their partner's death. The story is a tight, dark thriller peopled by very human--and some very evil--characters. Actor Richard Brewer reads the text in a steady staccato, but his attempts at underworld street talk and some of his pronunciation of ethnic words miss the mark. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM OUR EDITORS

Michael Connelly has called George Pelecanos "the best-kept secret in crime fiction," and he may very well be right. Pelecanos￯﾿ﾽs eight novels -- the most recent of which, Shame the Devil, has just arrived in bookstores -- are grittily authentic reflections of the violent, volatile society of Washington, DC, from the depression era to the present, and they have thus far made their author more of a cult figure than a household name. Famous or not, George Pelecanos is very, very good. He is one of a handful of young writers -- Connelly, Walter Mosley, Don Winslow, and Dennis Lehane also come to mind -- who are adding their own personal stamp to the established traditions of the crime genre and are redefining that genre for a new generation of readers.

Shame the Devil, which brings together a host of characters, major and minor, from earlier Pelecanos novels, opens on a sweltering July day in 1995. Two hardened ex-cons (Frank Farrow and Roman Otis) and one frightened amateur (Frank￯﾿ﾽs young brother, Richard) attempt to rob a Washington restaurant called May￯﾿ﾽs, with disastrous results. May￯﾿ﾽs is both a neighborhood pizza parlor and the collection point for a lucrative, small-time bookie operation. When the bagman for the operation, Carl Lewin, foolishly pulls a gun, the holdup rapidly becomes a bloodbath.

Carl Lewin is killed first, shot down by Frank Farrow. The three witnesses to that killing -- a waiter, a bartender, and a pizza chef -- are then summarily executed. After that, things continue to deteriorate. A passing policeman, William Jonas, hears the shots and arrives on the scene. In the ensuing shoot-out, Jonas kills Richard Farrow and is himself seriously wounded. Frank Farrow and Roman Otis manage to escape, but in the process they run down a five-year-old boy named Jimmy Karras, killing him instantly. Jimmy is the son of Dimitri Karras, hero of King Suckerman and The Sweet Forever, and he is one of several spirits who will dominate the background of this haunted, haunting book.

The brutal opening sequence occupies perhaps 20 pages. But, in a very real sense, everything that happens afterward is nothing more than the extended aftermath of that one crucial morning. At the end of his account of what will eventually be termed "the Pizza Parlor Murders," Pelecanos jumps across two and a half years of subsequent history, taking us to July 1998, and into the deeply unsettled lives of the friends and relatives of the various victims. Four of these people have come together to form an unofficial support group, which now meets weekly in the basement of a local church. Two of its members -- Bernie Walters and Dimitri Karras -- have lost their sons. One, Stephanie Maroulis, has lost her husband. The fourth member, Thomas Wilson, is carrying a double burden: He lost his oldest friend on the morning of the murders and is also harboring a guilty secret that is slowly eating him alive.

Pelecanos filters his narrative through the constantly shifting perspectives of these four characters and a significant number of others. Among these others are William Jonas, the paralyzed ex-policeman who was the only survivor of the May￯﾿ﾽs restaurant massacre; Frank Farrow and Roman Otis, who have unfinished business with Jonas and his family; and Nick Stefanos, the bartender/investigator who is the central figure of a number of Pelecanos novels, including A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip and Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go. Nick will play a crucial double role in this narrative. In his capacity as investigator for the Washington Public Defender￯﾿ﾽs Office, he uncovers some previously unknown facts about the 1995 killings and becomes a reluctant participant in the novel￯﾿ﾽs violent denouement. In his role as bartender for a local bar-and-grill called The Spot, he offers Dimitri Karras a part-time job and helps Karras begin the process of reconnecting with the world.

Shame the Devil is a moving, immensely readable novel that operates successfully on a number of levels. First of all, it is a tense, intelligent, well-constructed thriller. Second, it is a novel of character, illuminating the lives of a wide variety of people -- small-time hustlers, psychopathic killers, angst-ridden parents, alcoholic cops, and abused housewives -- with the ease and assurance of a born novelist. Most centrally, it is a novel about grief, guilt, and personal redemption, and it has much to say about the indelible effects of violence on victims and survivors and about the ongoing struggle to find some shred of meaning in a harsh, often predatory, universe. By whatever standards you care to apply, Shame the Devil is a first-rate work of fiction. It deserves the attention of genre aficionados and of serious, discriminating readers of every sort.

--Bill Sheehan

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shame the Devil is the profoundest kind of crime fiction, a story with a heart-stopping pace and the most evil killers this side of Elmore Leonard - but with an eye on the hereafter and the real cost of violence. As it builds to a showdown worthy of Sam Peckinpah, Shame the Devil explores the very essence of human nature, the beliefs that give lives meaning, and what people do when they see those beliefs broken.

FROM THE CRITICS

Philadelphia Inquirer

Colorful, often violent, always passionate, it's a remarkable group of players that Pelecanos has assembled for his continuing saga of the seamy side of Washington, D.C....vivid storytelling by a writer whose sense of the theatrical is a formidable strength...

Michael Shelden - Baltimore Sun

Like all his crime thrillers, this new novel is a thoroughly convincing story set on the mean streets of Washington, D.C., and is packed with vivid portraits of the petty criminals whose ignorance and rage have fueled the metropolitan crime epidemic.

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

...a masterpiece of fictional construction...exciting reading, providing a wonderful tour of the dark streets of D.C. and the dark hearts of the lost souls who live there. Pelecanos has an insider's love for detail.

Publishers Weekly

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. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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