Review
'Pelecanos has joined James Lee Burke and Lawrence Block at the high table of contemporary crime greats' The Times; 'America's hottest young crime writer... he just keeps getting better' Uncut; 'Pelecanos has always been hardboiled, but he aims straight and truly into the abyss with his noirish Shoedog' Washington Post; 'Pelecanos cannot write a dull sentence' Observer
Pelecanos is one of the latest masters of American detective fiction to find himself famous outside of his native America. This latest low-life trawl through the sleazy streets of Washington DC crackles with all the energy of his earlier novels, with the difference that this time the bulk of the shocks are tantalisingly delayed until the story's denouement. The hero, a college-educated drifter who has been hitch-hiking aimlessly around the world for a year or two, falls in with an enjoyably crummy gang of hoodlums who are planning a major robbery of two downtown liquor stores. It's giving nothing away to say that the book's climax begins when these start to go terribly, terribly wrong. Along the way are some irresistibly comic and seedy set-pieces, among them an all-too-believable late-night session in a pornographic 'Fun Palace', and the sleepless hours that follow the drinking binge just before the heist are reminiscent of the night before the battle in Richard III! From start to finish, Shoedog is fast-paced, vigorous and violent, further enhanced by the kind of lippy backchat that has won Pelecanos such a following. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
Constantine is a drifter. He hitches a ride on a bright spring morning with a little man named Polk. Later, with the grip of the .45 in his hand and the siren wailing at his back, he thinks the trouble started with the car stopping for his outstretched thumb.
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