Customer Reviews

Hard Revolution

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

George Pelecanos is one of those writers you start reading and then in spite of having to take out the garbage, or check the parking meter, or pop a prescription pill, you can't put the book down. What he does is hook you by making his characters so fleshed out, so well drawn, so real, that it's all you can do to stop--even if your wife, husband, girlfriend, or boyfriend is yelling at you because they need something immediately.

Hard Revolution, set in the late 50s, then the late 60s around Pelecanos' neck of the woods, Washington DC, seamlessly fuses a tale of social issues, day to day life of the working class, and hard crime. It does this by focusing on, as noted, the characters. Pelecanos does this a whole lot better than a slew of other writers working today. It's the characters that drive the situations they're in--whether they create the situations, or are forced into them, or stumble upon them.

Derek and Dennis Strange, brothers, are anything but two peas in a pod. The sons of a solid black working class couple, they live their lives the way they see fit. Dennis drifts--by the time the main action gets underway--1968--he's a VietNam vet and is directionless. This prompts him to move in drug circles, with those a lot nastier and more violent than he is. After getting caught by the proprietor of the store he tried to steal from when a kid, Derek gets his life straight and becomes one of the first black cops on the DC force.

No Pelecanos novel would exist without Greek characters and they're here too. But more than that are three lowlife white guys (Buzz and Dominic are two of the names, instantly giving you a sense of the time) whose actions ignite the black-white tension that forms the crux of the novel. Martin Luther King figures prominently here, so Pelecanos has made this far more than a crime novel--although crime itself is present, thanks to both the white and the black guys who just have to get what they want right away, whether it's the murder of an innocent black teenager, or the theft of a piece of jewelry.

One of the author's trademarks is definitely in evidence here as well--the music of the time. While this can even be slightly annoying (over and over, he quotes the name of the song and of the artist who sang it, listened to by a number of characters), eventually you really sink into the feel of the street in 60s DC, the atmosphere of the time, the rhythm of day to day life.

And in fact it's the description of this day to day life at which Pelecanos excels, and because of which this is such a compelling read. It's not so much the minutiae that he describes, but the way the characters respond to very select details of their lives as they're lived that gives this novel its meat and flavor both. When crime does erupt, it's sudden and violent and inevitable and intense, and at the same time it's what you KNOW will happen because it's what the character who's committed it HAS to do.

This is a great, immensely satisfying novel that is a solid addition to the Pelecanos canon. Highly recommended.

This fourth book in the Derek Strange cycle (Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, and Soul Circus precede it), finally takes longtime readers of Pelecanos to an event we've been waiting for him to deal with: Washington, D.C.'s 1968 riots. I wasn't even born until a few years after the riots, but growing up in D.C., it was hard to miss the physical and psychic scars they left on the city. Once again Pelecanos brilliantly uses the pulp crime novel as a vehicle for his sociocultural history of Washington, D.C. This is one of his best works yet, acting as a prequel to the Strange series while seamlessly taking on issues of race, what it means to be a man, duty, and the nobility of work.

The story opens with Derek Strange passing from childhood to adolescence in 1959, running around his Northeast neighborhood where white and black kids uneasily co-exist. His best friend is a Greek boy whose father owns the diner where Derek's father sweats over the grill. These seventy pages introduce almost all the dramatis personae of the main part of the book, including Derek's family (mother, father, older brother), the no-good Martini brothers, Detective Frank Vaughn and his family, and two racist gearheads named Buzz and Stu. A final character is the city itself, which is undergoing transformation as postwar integration brings demographic changes with it. There's a little heavy handedness, when Derek gets caught shoplifting and a store owner's lecture sets him on the right path, but for the most part this part is a carefully crafted kaleidoscopic tour of the people and places that will come into play nine years later.

Part Two takes place in the spring of 1968, during the weeks preceding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and into the riots that broke out in response. The intervening decade or so has seen Derek grow up to become a police officer (as has his best friend, Lydel Blue), doing his best to protect and serve while being called an Uncle Tom by a lot of his people. Meanwhile his slacker older brother Dennis has drifted in a haze of revolutionary rhetoric and heavy pot smoking. Dennis wants to better himself, but is hobbled by seeing oppression everywhere and a lack of inner strength, and gets caught up in the small-time plots of his unsavory drug friends. The Martini brothers went to Vietnam and only one came back, while Buzz and Stu are spinning their wheels in the same old places, albeit in new rides.

As the city simmers in the summer heat and racial tensions mount, the petty half-baked schemes of Buzz and Stu and Dennis' so-called friends start to take shape. The two Strange brothers find their lives intersecting with two armed robberies just as the city explodes in a cathartic orgy of burning and looting. Meanwhile, Det. Vaughn is combing the streets for whomever killed a young black student in a hit and run. These storylines all coalesce into a bloodbath that is punctuated by the riots. The riots are ably described, although Pelecanos' prose loses its verve and lapses into clipped reportage reads like a dry newspaper account. Still, if you've never read about the riots, this will give you a sense of the chaos and senselessness of it all. (For a more complete picture, track down a copy of Ten Blocks From the White House.)

Other subplots involve Derek's attempt to make up his mind about Carmen, his childhood sweetheart and former girlfriend, and his uneasy relationship with his liberal white partner. Of course there's all the usual Pelecanos pop-culture stuff, cars, bars, movies (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly plays a prominent role), and especially music (there are loads of discussions of soul, R&B, Motown, Stax, Volt, as well as many props given to DC-rocker Link Wray and his Raymen). At the end of the day, this is a brilliant book, not only because of its value as a cultural portrait of the real Washington, D.C., but for its discussion of race. Derek and his partner like and respect one another, but it takes them a while to realize that even with all the best intentions, one can never know what it is to walk in another man's shoes. There's also a very strong message embedded about the dignity and value of work--in this book, doing your job well is sometimes its own reward. This is a mature novel, one that deserves to break out of the crime shelves and into general readership--great stuff.

"Hard Revolution" is apparently part of a "prequel" trilogy that will provide the backstory to the Derek Strange we've met in Pelecanos' recent series of novels. The book gives the texture of DC in a way that's recognizable to someone like me who lived there well after 1968. It also captures the way people were thinking and talking about race at that time. One drawback is that someone who hasn't lived in DC (or hasn't ventured East of the Park or North of Logan Circle) will not get the geography. I used to live in Adams Morgan and worked up near Silver Spring & Shepherd Park, so the action takes place in neighborhoods and streets I came to know very well. But someone else is likely to be miffed, in places.

The plot really takes a backseat to the characters and the 1968 riots provide a temporal anchor to the story rather than being its main focal point. In many ways, placing the the riots in a largely secondary role (while priming us for them with the recurring mentions of Dr. King) makes this stronger as a work of historical fiction--we are left to figure out what was happening without someone trying to hit us over the head with "heavy" explanations.

At the heart of this are relationships--between Strange and his brother; between the brother and a couple small time hoods; and among a parallel group of three white hoods of similar age. The interconnectedness of the African-American community in Washington and the connections between the African-American characters with various whites also play a big part. The ambiguity and contradictions that frame peoples' ideas about race and their relations with people from a different race are all real and have seldom been described with such meaning and depth, particularly by a white writer.

Pelecanos is one of the few really prolific mystery writers whose work has continued to grow and develop without outgrowing his characters or plots. I look forward to whatever comes next.

The best writer of black crime fiction is white. Pelecanos knows stuff that no other white person knows and stuff that no black would ever tell a white. How does he know this stuff? While other writers may have black characters they do not have the right voice so most don't even try. Pelecanos is different. Not only does his voice ring true, it is true. This novel introduces us to the young Derek Strange. Although technically a crime novel, there is precious little sleuthing here. Rather, Pelecanos wants us to know and feel how close this nation came to being ripped apart by Viet Nam and civil rights. This is strong stuff. Highly recommended.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is set in D.C. during the 1960's at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The main characters are everyday people of different races and the plot is moved along by their interactions. Hard Revolution gives an incredible perspective on human relationships,especially in terms of race/ class relationships. Read this book. I cannot say enough...

There is a certain sense of realism in the books of George Pelecanos which hits right to the heart of the human emotion. The characters are sparked with the heat of life in situations that reek of reality. Pelecanos novels jump around in time but place seems quite stable with a Washington DC setting. In this case we are in the year 1959 and 1968- a time of great turmoil and change in the civil rights movement.
HARD REVOLUTION is a multifaceted story with several subplots occurring at the same time. Derek Strange is a police officer just getting his feet wet as a rookie in the edgy black section of DC. He worries about his older brother who runs with the wrong crowd, yet, is trying to rehabilitate himself but may not have the moral fortitude to do so. Detective Frank Vaughn looks for the killers of a young black man- the victim of a hit and run. While the three killers plan a robbery they hope will make them enough to ease their financial woes. All this is told with the background of the civil rights movement and the neighborhood which is like a powder keg ready to explode.
Movies and pop songs give the story its timeline, as well as its character. Nobody can argue with the writing skills of George Pelecanos. He is right up there with James Lee Burke in being one of the most technically perfect writers in the genre. It is the characters which give his books such a distinguished aire. The stories move quickly and all characters are humanized- the bad and the good and that is rare indeed. One of the year's best as usual with Mr. Pelecanos.

This is the first of George Pelecanos' novels I've had the pleasure of reading. I picked it up based on the two pages of blurbs at the front of the book. I expected crime fiction, and hoped for an intelligent read. My expectations and hopes were met, but "Hard Revolution," is much more than crime fiction. Three-quarters of the way through I started thinking about awards. "Hard Revolution," should be a definite contender, if not winner of the Edgar, but that's to cement this effort in a category it transcends. Seems to me "Hard Revolution," should be up for a National Book Award, or Pulitzer.

I won't provide a plot summary as other reviewers have more than adequately covered that ground.

Mr. Pelecanos gives us a character study in which he proves he knows what makes people tick, a crime story that moves with true motivation, and a particularly troublesome piece of American history. The only character problem I saw was the all-abiding goodness of Darius and Alethea, the protagonist's parents. But even their goodness allowed for a certain edge that kept them believable. It may be more my cynicism than the author's failing.

There may be four or five pages in this book - toward the end - that give us a little more detail of the destruction of the DC riots in 1968, but in defense of those pages Mr. Pelecanos does well in making the streets familiar enough that maybe we'd want to know what happened to the various businesses that were torched and looted.

I've learned "Hard Revolution," is a prequel to a series of novels centered around DC and the life and times of Derek Strange. I look forward to catching up!

Highly recommended to those who are interested in a good novel.

HARD REVOLUTION is another stunning book by Pelecanos, taking us back to the turbulent year of 1968, after first making a brief stop in 1959. Pelecanos is an acquired taste because when he tells his story he holds nothing back no matter how distasteful the acts may be. Modern hardboiled at it's nastiest but brilliant in capturing the mood of the people and the time.

Before HARD REVOLUTION came the Derek Strange trilogy of RIGHT AS RAIN, HELL TO PAY and SOUL CIRCUS. Set in present day Washington D.C., they featured the black private detective struggling to earn a buck while making every effort to ensure the children from his neighbourhood had a chance to make something of themselves rather than being drawn into the gang lifestyle. Now we are taken back in time, first to 1959 and then to 1968 to meet the young Derek Strange.

Unrest simmers close to the surface as everyone senses that there is a social change in the air. This part of the story is paced by constant updates about the approaching rally in Memphis that Martin Luther King JR is due to speak at. So apart from the fictional tension built up by the actions of Pelecanos' characters, there is also the added tension that comes from knowing the true events that about to take place.

This is not what I would term your usual crime novel because there is no clear single plot. Rather, it travels along many paths and gives an insightful commentary about social unrest in a tumultuous period of modern history. Murders take place, murders are solved, but they are more or less incidental to the story which is more a focus on the characters and the period of time in which they lived. It's a powerful book that deals with sensitive issues in a hard-nosed way.

The writing is the best I have read in the crime genre in years, and the characters are drawn perfectly. Each new addition to his resume seems to add something amazing, surprising and interesting. Pelecanos is not only the best writer in the genre, he is probably one of the best American authors working today - period. Everything is fresh, and the story crackles with action on each page. For sheer entertainment value it is unbeatable. The plot is tight, the background realistic and the pace never slows. Not a boring passage in 400 pages.

With the publication of his latest book HARD REVOLUTION, George Pelecanos has written an even dozen novels. Yet he is not as well known as some of his less prodigious and, alas, less talented brethren. Perhaps HARD REVOLUTION will change that.

Pelecanos's Washington, D.C. is not that of the edifices and facades of government; rather, he walks the streets that aren't mentioned in any guidebooks. His last three novels --- RIGHT AS RAIN, HELL TO PAY and SOUL CIRCUS --- have centered on an ex-D.C. police officer named Derek Strange who runs Strange Investigations, a private detective agency. HARD REVOLUTION is a prequel to this series looking at Strange's life as a child in the late 1950s and his experiences as a rookie policeman in 1968 when social upheaval on several different levels was reaching its boiling point. Looking at this Strange will give readers a lot of insight into the character that they have come to know.

Those who come to HARD REVOLUTION with expectations of a straight crime novel will be disappointed; those who read it without expectations will be amply rewarded. We first meet Strange as a twelve-year-old, shortly before the occurrence of a pivotal moment that sets him on the course for his future as a Washington, D.C. policeman. What's also clear is that Strange's parents are his strongest and longest lasting influence. They are hardworking people whose moral compass is a beacon for Strange and a burden that Dennis, his less-fortunate older brother, is unable to live up to. Pelecanos uses almost the first quarter of the book to introduce Strange, his family and a cast of supporting characters. Some readers may find that these chapters drag in spots, but they are extremely well written and ultimately are critical to what is to follow.

Pelecanos then jumps ahead to spring 1968, when the nation is torn apart by the Vietnam War and racial issues. Strange, now a rookie policeman, is dealing with issues on a number of fronts. As a black police officer, he has few friends in the urban community, subsisting primarily on the camaraderie of a few of his fellow officers, the pride of his family and the erstwhile love of a woman to whom he is unable to commit. Strange also is concerned for his brother Dennis, whose companions include a sociopath named Alvin Jones who swims like a shark through the sea of urban D.C.

Strange also meets a veteran police officer named Frank Vaughn, a deeply flawed man who is at the same time a good cop. When a young black man is killed in what appears to be a deliberate hit-and-run accident, Vaughn's quiet sense of outrage cannot let the matter rest, even though he is hardly a politically correct civil rights advocate. Vaughn's determination to bring the perpetrators to justice crosses paths with Strange's quiet determination to do well in the middle of riot-torn D.C. during an armed bank robbery. When events ultimately bring Strange to pursue vengeance, Vaughn is there to show him how the job gets done. The result is a conclusion that will leave neither man quite the same.

Pelecanos's description of the era in which HARD REVOLUTION is set is simply first-rate. While it is relatively easy to get the large details right, it is the way that Pelecanos fills in the nooks and crannies of the era that lends this work its air of authenticity. Pelecanos is particularly dead-on with respect to the local D.C. music scene during the era --- I had forgotten how influential the musicians in the D.C. and Virginia areas had been during the late 1950s --- as well as the national television scene. That Darius Strange, father to Derek and Dennis, is a huge fan of television westerns is a nice touch.

One of the most interesting aspects of HARD REVOLUTION is the introduction of Vaughn. One would hope that Pelecanos's future plans include another novel with Vaughn as at least a secondary character, if not the primary protagonist. However, Pelecanos's extensive bibliography should keep everyone busy until that particular issue is addressed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub