Right As Rain

Right as Rain by George Pelecanos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A white cop kills an off-duty black cop and the black cop's mother hires Derek Strange to get to the bottom of things. Strange stumbles into a world of drug dealers and dirty cops, and the only man who can help him is Terry Quinn, the white cop who shot the son of the woman who hired him...

Right as Rain kicks off the Derek Strange series. Strange, a sixty-ish black PI, is a pretty smooth character, a former cop who is fond of westerns. Terry Quinn is a white disgraced former cop who works in a used book and record store. Pelecanos uses their contrasting characteristics to explore race relations in Washington DC while they tackle the case of Chris Wilson, the off-duty cop Quinn killed.

Sound like Lethal Weapon? It's not, although Strange and Quinn poke fun at the Gibson and Glover action comedy a couple times. Strange and Quinn are both very well developed characters. Quinn's an intense guy and isn't sure if he shot Wilson because he was brandishing a gun or because he was black. Further complicating Quinn's feelings on race are Juana, his half-black, half-Puerto Rican girlfriend. Strange has been in a casual relationship with his secretary for years but won't commit despite feeling fatherly toward her son Lionel.

The friendship between Strange and Quinn grows naturally, first over westerns and boxing, and seemed pretty believable to me. I found myself caring about their relationships with their women and with each other more than the eventual gunplay I knew was coming.

The villains of the piece, the drug dealers, aren't as developed as I would have liked but the story is more about the interactions between Strange and Quinn anyway. Although I did like that Pelecanos had them leave DC for the country a bit. Both men emerge from the story changed men to some degree. Strange's case turns out well and Quinn learns a few things about himself.

4 stars. I'll be reading more of Strange and Quinn in the future.



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Shame the Devil

Shame the Devil by George Pelecanos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When a pizza shop robbery takes a violent turn, the thieves are never caught and the lives of several people are torn apart, most notably Dimitri Karras when his young son Jimmy is struck and killed by the criminals as they make their getaway. Years later, Dimitri is trying to put his life back together when he runs into an old acquaintance, PI Nick Stefanos. But what connection does Dimitri have with that fateful robbery...?

The DC Quartet goes out with a bang and it's my favorite George Pelecanos yet. The stories of Dimitri Karras and Nick Stefanos intersect and the whole is even better than the sum of its parts.

When we catch up with Dimitri, he's divorced and can't escape the memory of his dead son. He's in a support group with the other friends and relatives of the murder victims from the pizza shop robbery. Nick's still working at the Spot and still taking on PI work but is staying away from murder and drugs. He's still battling his considerable drinking problem.

The story comes together very organically. By now, the denizens of Pelecanos' DC are pretty real for me and the interactions between Nick and Dimitri were my favorite parts of the book. When Nick got Dimitri a job at the spot, I had a feeling how the end would shape up. I was nearly right and I'm glad the ending didn't mirror The Big Blowdown.

It was cool to see Boyle working with Karras and Stefanos. I missed Marcus Clay and Clarence Tate but it was cool knowing how they ended up after The Sweet Forever. Good for them!

The book has a slow build as the killers return to DC and Nick and Dimitri eventually cross paths. While I didn't think the gun fight at the end was as good as the one in The Sweet Forever, I liked the ending a whole lot more. The greedy part of me wants to read another book about Nick and Dimitri but I'm glad Pelecanos is leaving them behind for now. They've earned it.

Shame the Devil brings closure to both the DC Quartet and the Nick Stefanos trilogy. Like I said above, it's my favorite Pelecanos so far.

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The Sweet Forever

The Sweet Forever: A Novel by George Pelecanos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A drug runner's car crashes outside of Marcus Clay's record store and someone steals a bag of money out of the back of the car as it burns. Will the stolen bag of money destroy all that Marcus Clay has worked to build?

The third book in George Peleanos' DC Quartet catches up with Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay in the 1980s, years after the events of King Suckerman. Marcus now owns a chain of record stores and Dimitri owns an impressive cocaine habit. Complicating matters are a pair of crooked cops, a local crime lord named Tyrell Cleveland and his goons.

Tension slowly builds in this one as Karras sinks deeper into addiction, one of the crooked cops grows a conscience, and the stolen money seems to be the cause of all the troubles in the world. In addition to music, Basketball plays a big part in this book, notably Len Bias, who would die of a cocaine overdose after being drafted before ever playing for the Celtic, an event I remember from when I was a kid.

Nods to other works in the Pelecanos-verse abound, notably appearances by both Big Nick Stefanos and his grandson, Nick, who has just begun his self-destructive was.

Without giving away too much, this one ends with one of the best gunfights in crime fiction, right up there with Matthew Scudder and Mick Ballou taking down the bad guys in Everybody Dies. 4.5 stars.

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iD

iD by Madeline Ashby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After being forced to poison his wife Amy, vN Javier goes on the run to find her backup. Can he find it before his enemies find him and shut him down permanently?

Disclaimer: I got this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for reviewing it.

iD takes place in a future where men and machines live side by side. While it's the first book in a series, following vN, it didn't take me long to get up to speed. I love the concept of self-replicating androids. Hell, there are a lot of great concepts in this one, like 3D printers capable of printing organic matter, for instance.

Javier lies and fornicates his way around the world, looking for his wife's backup, all the while avoiding the legions of vNs looking to kill him. From what I gather, Javier was some kind of sexbot before he settled down with Amy and he uses his talents quite a bit in his info-gathering.

The writing was really good. Like I said, I knew this was the second book in a series by Ashby did a good job of helping me keep my head above water. She also knows how to write some reprehensible characters, like Powell and LaMarque.

iD was a really cool read, full of action, sex, and interesting sf concepts. Now I'll have to get vN and read about all the events that were hinted about in this one.

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Growing Up Humming

Growing Up Humming by Mike Spinak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Growing Up Humming is a children's non-fiction book about some hummingbird chicks growing up and leaving the nest.

I got a PDF of this in exchange for reviewing it from the author. It took me all of twenty minutes to read. It's written in a suitable style for kids, simple without being patronizing. And the photos...

The photos were by far my favorite part. They are spectacular, showing every last feather. Since I've spent quite a bit of time over the past few years trying to take acceptable pictures of hummingbirds, I am pretty jealous.

If this book had been available when I was a kid, I would have read it until it fell apart. Four stars.

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The Cambodian Book of the Dead

Cambodian Book of the Dead by Tom Vater
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maier, a German reporter-turned-detective goes to Cambodia to find the heir to a coffee fortune. Maier's quest gets him entangled with a beautiful woman who's lovers inevitably die horribly, a Khmer Rouge general, and a Nazi war criminal called the White Spider. Will Maier return from the killing fields or die trying?

First, the official business. I got this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for reviewing it.

This book and I did not really get along. It's supposed to be a thriller but aside from a man being torn apart by a tiger shark, there aren't many thrilling bits in the first 50% of the book. The story started taking off after that but by then, I had already soured on it.

The book felt to me like Tom Vater has a great fascination with Cambodian history and culture. While that's fine, some of it felt really out of place in a thriller and slowed the story down considerably. By the time things picked up, I was ready for bad things to happen to Maier.

Speaking of bad things, the second half of the book salvaged things a bit as Maier had people gunning for him and wound up drugged a couple times. Another thing this book had going for it was the characters. While I didn't think Maier was anything special, I loved Clarissa, and thought Les, Pete, and Kaley were multifaceted characters and very nicely done. I also loved the little girl assassins. The White Spider's background was also really good.

Two stars. It was okay but the pace in the first half killed it for me.



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Penance

Penance: A Chicago Thriller by Dan O'Shea
Dan's rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher: Angry Robot/Exhibit A
Available: Now
Price: 14.99


When an old woman is shot by a sniper just after leaving confession at Sacred Heart church, Chicago cop John Lynch is on the case. But what does the case have to do with one in 1971 that saw his father murdered? And what will the shadowy government organization that has also been tapped to bring in the sniper do if Lynch gets in the way?

First off, the official stuff: I got this ARC from Exhibit A in exchange for reviewing it. I'm a huge Angry Robot fan so when I heard they were launching a crime line, I sprung into action and nabbed print ARCs of their first two books.

Penance is a hard animal to classify, kind of like a dinosaur. In this case, it's not bird vs. reptile but hard-boiled detective vs. police procedural vs. espionage thriller. It's an exciting chimera to behold.

The protagonist, John Lynch, was the biggest selling point for me. A second generation cop, Lynch has been living in the shadow of his father, murdered when he was a kid, most of his life. He doggedly pursues the sniper despite being shot at, stonewalled, and eventually blackballed. He's no superhero, either, getting wounded over the course of the book and not being comfortable with taking a life. His relationship with Liz was a little abrupt but not outside the realm of believability once it got going.

When the book first jumped to Weaver and his black ops crew, I rolled my eyes a bit, military fiction not being one of my favorite genres. While Weaver's segments had a few too many tactics and weapons descriptions for my taste, it managed to steer clear from gun porn territory and actually meshed pretty well with the more detective-y sections featuring Lynch. It also didn't give me Brad Thor flashbacks, something else I am thankful for. Weaver, Ferguson, and the rest were believable antagonists, adhering to the rule that the best villains are the ones that think their actions are right and justified.

The sniper, while not getting a lot of solo time, was pretty believable and made a chilling threat. I found myself avoiding windows when walking to the bathroom to keep from getting shot by an unseen assailant a few times. I also really liked his reasoning behind shooting people just after they left confession.

The two plot threads, the one in the past with Lynch's father and Lynch's tale in the present day, intersected where I thought they would. There were some twists near the end that brought this above the level of most thrillers.

One thing that I thought was really odd was this bit from Lynch's point of view:

Colleen Lynch-Ketteridge stepped out of the car in a Hillary Clinton-type pant suit, except Hillary didn't have Collie's ass.
The phrasing is a little creepy to me but I don't have a sister. Maybe if they have nice asses you say things like this?

3.5 stars. I'll read another Dan O'Shea (or Exibit A) book after this.

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