GEORGE PELECANOS TELLS WHAT IT WAS

I suggested in my review a few months ago of George Pelecanos' last novel, The Cut (you can link to it here), that it marked a departure of sorts—it appeared to be both the last in a quartet I called 'Fathers & Sons' but also perhaps the first of a new series, and also a book written in a more straight-forward style that perhaps reflects his television writing but also recalls some of his earlier books with echoes of hard-boiled pulp and westerns.

What It Was is, on the surface, another remarkably straight-forward crime story, and not the first book featuring Derek Strange to follow a western motif: a driving narrative that ends in a shootout. But What It Was is also a meditation, one made all the more effective for the seemingly simple action that drives it.

The story is set in 1972, around the time of the Watergate breakins (and yes, the security guard named Frank who's pointed out in one of the bar scenes is indeed Frank Willis—there is an element of recognition in this novel I found very satisfying, but that many younger –or British--readers will miss) and Derek Strange has left the police and set-up as a private eye. He's hired by Maybelline Walker to retrieve a piece of costume jewellrey with sentimental value, that she'd given to a friend to appraise; said friend has been murdered and the ring has disappeared.

As it happens, the murder is being investigated by Strange's old police partner, Frank 'Hound Dog' Vaughn, and the killer is Robert Lee Jones, known as 'Red Fury', who has embarked on a spree of killing for hire and robbery. But he's ripped off some of the wrong people; mafia killers from up north descend on DC to track down and deal with Fury, even as Strange finds himself caught up in Vaughn's investigation. It's a great story, told with tremendous drive. Red and his girlfriend Coco, driving his muscle-bound Plymouth Fury (part of the derivation of his street name) are outlaws, characters born half from westerns and half from the love of the images of the new black heroes on the screen: this is Shaft chasing Superfly in an urban spaghetti western. The supporting cast is well drawn: the numbers kingpin who gets ripped off, the young hookers the mafia killers party with, the transvestite Martina who is Vaughn's best informant, the Vietnam vet witness Strange tracks down, dismissed by the police as a wino, who maintains a precious sort of dignity; it makes for a rich setting. And, as I said, there are references: to the massive Afros of basketball stars Darnell Hillman and Artis 'Rigor Artis' Gilmore, to Stymie of the Little Rascals, even to a young Nick Stefanos, whom readers of Pelecanos' earlier novels will recognise.

And that all fits perfectly, because this is a meditation—on what it was. The story is being told by Strange to Stefanos, because they are now detective partners, in an afternoon session in a bar, doing what men used to do. What you do, and more importantly, how you do it, defines what you are, and influences everything else. Vaughn, whose views on race are shall we say old-fashioned, still takes people as they come to him, particularly Strange. But as attitudes in society change, that approach becomes more difficult, because the assumptions that lie beneath it are being turned over.

It is a meditation on a different time, with different values, and on change. We all looked different in 1972, not least Pelecanos (see right) and the world seemed more chaotic, and positive, than it did, or does now. Take a look at the cover of the UK edition, which is perfect: hidden inside the natural Afro are all the things which used to define us in the world of adults. Maybe the difference is that now we've managed to transform the world so most people live as if it were a children's world. But of course it isn't.

We see the increase of violence, for its own sake, outside the tight confines even of the business of crime. We see one of the key moments that drove such change – to me the scene with the young hookers using cocaine, the new drug which soon will take over, is indicative of a complete transformation of the value systems of a generation—even one that's already become accustomed to drugs.

This may seem a lot with which to lumber a small taut novel like this, but that's the beauty of Pelecanos' writing; he makes the attitudes shine through. He also returns to his old technique of using music to set scenes and define characters: it's not a coincidence that Strange begins telling his story in reverie inspired by The Dramatics singing 'In The Rain'.

'He's living for this summer,' is one description of Red Fury's disregard for consequences.This is a summer of change—Watergate reminds us of that, perhaps that was the moment when faith in institutional change finally went down the drain. Or up the straw. As the story ends, with reference to 'print the legend' from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence', Strange and Stefanos leave a big tip and go back to work. That's what men do. 'I'll see you when I do,' says Red Fury. Tru dat. What it was indeed.

What It Was by George Pelecanos Orion Books, £9.99 ISBN 9781409143675 NOTE: Orion are offering this book as a 99p ebook and also in a £25 signed & numbered hardback

This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

GEORGE PELECANOS' CUT

When I reviewed The Way Home in 2009 (you can link to it here), I suggested that, since so much of his work falls into the series framework, it might be grouped with George Pelecanos' previous two novels, The Night Gardener and The Turnaround, into a trilogy I dubbed 'Fathers and Sons'. His new novel, The Cut, in one sense might be considered the fourth book in what would then become a quartet, but it also marks a departure in style from the trilogy which precedes it, and also introduces a character who seems poised to begin a series of novels all his own. Spero Lucas does the investigating that gets a major drug dealer's nephew off a stolen car/traffic accident beef, and winds up working for the dealer to trace a leak in his marijuana supply chain. Things get complicated from there, and there's an interesting twist in the end, which helps confirm Spero's lone-wolf status.

In one sense, Spero's story continues the concerns of the 'Fathers and Sons' trilogy, with family values, in the old-fashioned, core sense of that phrase, being at their centre. Lucas is one of four children, two natural, two adopted, raised by hard-working Greek parents. He and his brother Leo are the adopted ones, and Leo is black. Of the two older children, one is a successful lawyer and the other is a ne'er do well; neither has much to do with their widowed mother. Leo is a teacher, Spero a war-hero home from Iraq, working as a casual investigator for a criminal defense attorney. The Cut features sub-plots; one of Leo's students is a witness to one of the central crimes, and is a bright boy in need of a father figure; a crooked cop turns out to have a criminal father of the worst sort—the contrasts between nature and nurture are never sharper than when Pelecanos approaches them through the prism of crime.

But looked at from another angle, The Cut does a couple of things differently from most of his previous fiction. There is a feeling in the way the book is structured around Spero that reminded me of Robert B Parker's fiction, how quickly he constructs a scene and the characters within it, and then moves on. Like so many of Parker's novels, this one also moves very quickly toward one big action scene, a structure not unlike the westerns which Pelecanos admires and which have been reflected before in his work.

The other new thing is Spero himself, who, unlikely as it seems, reminds me of John D MacDonald's Travis McGee, the 'salvage consultant'. That's the nature of Spero's work for the defense attorney. Like McGee, he possesses superior and well-honed skills that make him more formidable than he might seem (and like McGee's, those skills were acquired in the military). But most striking is Spero's attitude toward the opposite sex: though firmly on the side of families and raising children properly, he is, like McGee, a confirmed bachelor and unwilling (or unable) to commit to a relationship—though he is a lot of fun even without that. Being the 21st century, this attitude runs afoul of one of the women in the story, but being McGee-like that is, in effect, her problem. Admittedly, it has been a long time since I read a Travis McGee, but I was hearing definite echoes of his pop psychology in the narrative.

This is not meant to deflate the impact of this book. There is no one writing crime fiction who deals more realistically or more tellingly with the situation of working class people in American cities, and the degradation of life within those cities caused by the disappearance of jobs and the downscaling of education as a government priority for those people. He makes the problem personal, and that works. In The Cut, he has adapted those concerns to a faster-paced, more hero-centered story. If it's Parker and MacDonald with a conscience and a soul, that is not a bad thing to be.

The Cut by George Pelecanos
Orion Books, £12.99 ISBN 9781409114567