Author George Pelecanos:
Reading a particular author is like meeting a person who may become your friend. I, as the reader, stumble my way into the dark swamp of his words and, in turn, his mind and attitude and personality, and heart. If I like him and we seem to agree on important things, we strike up a friendship. This friendship starts tentative, but as we get to know each other more, it either peters out or deepens. Bonding with a friend who is wise and genuine, I get to learn new things from him and become a better person.
I met Pelecanos upon his first novel, "A Firing Offense," about a Greek American young man who accidentally becomes a private detective. The novel, he said at 2006 National Book Festival, he wrote longhand on a yellow pad in 10 years of drifting through a series of blue-collar jobs. He had a story to tell and was compelled to tell it. The handwritten pad was mailed to a publisher in New York and, after a year, was bought and published. It has all the trappings of a first novel --- a bit wobbly in style and a little clumsy in plotting. But the vitality flowing through the pages was palpable. The element that won me over was the impeccable description of the neighborhoods of Washington, DC.
I then read a couple of novels he wrote in the ensuing years, which kept my attention but did not sweep me of my feet.
A week ago I picked up "The Night Gardener" (2006), his most recent work, at the urging of an enthusiastic coworker. It turned out to be the finest of his to date and one of the best crime/detective/mystery novel I've ever read.
The night I got to Chapter thirty-something near the end, when the big twist was revealed, I had to put it down and wept. It was both devastating and exhilarating. That was the moment I fell definitely, head-over-heels into this beautiful friendship, and I knew his future works will be a trusted old friend to whom I can devote all of my trust and loyalty.
Last night I finished the final few chapters. Then I wept again. It is that kind of a book. A tremendous book.
The novel opens rather conventionally. On a damp evening in 1985, a body of a 13-year-old girl was found in a community garden in a poor district in DC. A middle-aged black detective named TC Cook, one of the finest on MPD, was examining the crime scene. The murderer was apparently a serial killer who had already killed twice. Behind him were two rookie white policemen, the cocky and ambitious Dan Holiday and the straight-arrow, slightly dull Gus Ramone.
If you think the entire book is about the three of them teaming up to catch this serial killer, coined "The Palindrome Murderer" or "The Night Gardener", you'd be wrong, but you won't be disappointed.
The novel mostly takes place 20 years later, when another young teenage boy's body was found at a community garden, a gunshot in the head. There were similarities and notable differences between this and the previous murders. The three policemen at the 1985 crime scene all thought of The Palindrome murders 20 years earlier, because this boy, Asa Johnson, also had a name that spelled the same backward and forward.
By 2005, however, the three policemen had ended up at places they hadn't quite anticipated -- as what often happens in real life. Cook had retired, had a stroke, and was living alone. Well, not quite alone, since the ghosts of the three murdered children continued to haunte him every day. The killing had stopped in 85 after three deaths. The possible perp he suspected had gone to jail for something else but was recently released. He often sat in the car a short distance away from the man's house, waiting for something to happen.
Gus Ramone, who had planned to "put in his 25 years and move on," was now a married man with two children and had made detective on the homicide squad. His family life took up much of the book, as his teenage son had been a classmate and a friend with the victim Asa Johnson. As a middle-aged working man, a father and husband, this feeling of powerlessness crept into his heart -- Can he protect his son or other teenagers from murder and violence? Can he protect his son from the racism around him? His children were half black and had to constantly fend off unfair treatment and humiliations from the adults at school and in the community.
Dan Holiday, who had great expectations for his career and felt he was a natural-born detective, had unexpectedly been kicked off the force for morally questionable conduct and ran a limo and private security business. He drank with other middle-aged men living in quite desperation. He routinely picked up women in hotel bars for anonymous one-night stands. The only emotional anchor in his life now was that he still dreamed of being a policeman. He was the contrast character for Ramone -- unattached, restless, heavy-drinking, rule-breaking, risk-taking, a loner and a rogue.
From my description the characters and situations seem like stock figures. You can instantly recall the overused "the-Odd-Couple" type of male pairing: Lewis and Martin, the Lethal Weapon movies, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo ... But Pelecanos' treatment of the "types" of middle-aged men are simultaneously familiar and original. Actually many elements in this (and his other) novels are both familiar and original. He is not afraid of taking conventional story devices and setup and twisting them sideways, upside down, and inside out.
Given the maturity of the police-procedural/thriller genre, many authors have tried to put their personal stamps on most otherwise familiar elements --- the driven, obsessed or grumpy, reluctant detective, increasingly bizarre motives of the perp, convoluted plots and puzzles, the tension or contrast between partners ... Pelecanos' personal stamp, however, is the plainest and most effective --- an unrelenting honesty and a stunning realism.
We are so used to lazy cliches in books, movies, television, even news, that "narratives" and stereotypes have hijacked our perception of real people and real life. It is then startling, occasionally shocking, to see hot-blooded humanity thrust upon your in all of its glorious contradictions and lovely flaws. It is not easy to quickly settle into comfortable sympathy with his male characters. Instead they really earn it, slowly, with a moral ambiguity that we encounter all too often in life. Once you get to know these guys though, your heart just can never be elsewhere.
Besides romance, nothing is more distorted into tiresome routine in fiction than crimes, especially urban crimes and the depiction of what is vaguely known as "America's race problem." Walter Mosley is the master of the West Coast brand of racial conflicts. Pelecanos' precise depiction of the racial environment in Washington DC area paints a different picture. It's not to say that there is no blatant racism in DC, but the racial relationship has its unique flavor compared with NYC, Baltimore, the South, and particularly the West-Coast type of self-deluded enlightenment and extreme economical segregation.
It is very, very difficult to balance the entangled emotions and penetrate the perceptive wall between the black and the white, and discuss the heart of the matter with a stand but without condescension. To do so would be doubly difficult for a white author, because the powerful position is a blind spot that most high-minded liberals cannot see past. Perhaps it was the lack of too much schooling and the years in blue-collar jobs that gave Pelecanos the advantage over the ivory-tower elitists who defend themselves with "I have friends who are African American ..." Pelecanos captures the truth with the precision of a surgeon's knife, a perfect example of "show, don't tell".
Well, enough digressions. Back to the novel and the many strands of plot and theme he juggles. Interracial marriage and mixed-race children. The seen and unseen crimes against children. The disintegration of communities. The role of policemen in relation to others in the community. The condition of a young black person living in a poor urban neighborhood. Illegal drug deals. Guns and gun-control laws of DC and the country at large. Flawed but decent people struggling to do the best they know how. Morality and the law. Hopes and dreams, including the dashed ones and the ones that still have a chance to come true. Redemption. And, one of my favorite themes as you know, the challenges and dilemmas in the middle age (in this case it's about middle-aged men, obviously).
Who killed Asa Johnson? Would the 20-year-old serial murders be solved? Would Ramone and Holiday overcome the hostility and resentment between them and team up to solve the crimes? In the previous Pelecanos novels, the whodonit is always an afterthought and a side plot, while the people and their lives take center stage. The Night Gardener is more like a conventional mystery and does dangle the final revelation a little bit until the final chapters. It is also more adherent to the police procedural genre. Suspects were interrogated. (but still with a twist from the bravados of conventional characters). Evidence was examined and reported. Witnesses were sought and questioned. Surveillance was conducted. Nevertheless, the lives of ordinary characters remain the heart of the story. Even minor characters were palpably true to life. Not that I have known any policeman in life or studied law enforcement or witnessed a minute of crime investigation --- I have earned my credentials solely from reading and watching way too much crime dramas, mostly fiction but some "true-crime" stuff. Yet the description of police work is probably the most believable and closest to true-crime accounts. At a couple of places he even made small jokes about Law and Order. Remarkable, or perhaps baffling, how he was able to shun almost all gimmicks so pervasive in this genre and maintain an understated, stark authenticity with neither cheap thrills nor deliberate gloom.
Perhaps because I had read Pelecanos' debut novel along with Denis Lehane's first book, the mental connection and comparison has become almost subconscious. Indeed both men have a similar grittiness and very (heterosexual?) male point of view. Both wrote for the acclaimed TV series "The Wire," although Pelecanos more deeply so. I am very impressed with Lehane, but more fond of Pelecanos. I could be biased by my own geographic affiliation --- not only the places but the local culture and attitude Pelecanos writes about resonate. I also prefer his warmth toward his characters and (deeply buried) optimism, in contrast to Lehane's fatalistic view on life and fate and evil. Catholics all believe in evil. Lehane's tendency toward high drama and mysticism is fine, but pure realism is more difficult and attractive.
On the one hand, I wish there were more authentic and unflinching voices to portray the female middle life like Pelecanos has done for men. On the other hand, peeking into the masculine viewpoint through such honest, no-nonsense writing is thrilling for a female reader.
After this excessively long book review, I begin to have second thoughts about recommending Pelecanos' novels to others. I love them myself, but all the brutal honesty, the somewhat macho attitude, the cool unsentimental observation, the relentless authenticity, the head-on encounter with all the contradictions and ambiguities of life and people... He is not for the faint of heart or the seekers of dreamy escape. He gives no certainty or resolution, because life gives neither.
，从哪本书看起比较好？圣诞新年假期最适合看侦探小说了。
None taken. 事实如此。我写中文只能把话说明白，无废话，21。漂亮或优美是搞不来的。小时候既没有背唐诗也没有读红楼梦的结果，总还是一粒科学中年。
