Police and Thieves: A Novel [Hardcover]

Peter Plate (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 1999

The narrator of Police and Thieves, Doojie, is a small-time dealer who lives in a garage behind a laundromat with his two partners in crime. They sell dope of questionable quality at reasonable prices. But when one night Doojie sees a renegade cop shoot an unarmed Mexican, he knows that things are about to change. Soon he and his buddies are running for their lives. Fast, ferocious, gritty, and bleak, Police and Thieves is contemporary noir at its best, and one of the most ambitious entries in the Peter Plate canon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's a point in Plate's new novel when the narrator, a nickel-bag drug dealer named Doojie, spies a hooker walking up the street. What he sees has nothing to do with sex. Instead, he recognizes the washed-out eyes, the track marks, the veiny legsAall the signs of a disposable human being, just like Doojie and just like everyone else in this oddly moving chronicle of street life in San Francisco's gritty Mission District. The book follows the lives of three small-time drug dealers whose ambitious plans belie the reality of their pathetic circumstances. Besides Doojie, there's Bobo, an ex-convict who provides the trio with a little muscle, and Eichmann (the name is ironic, since Doojie is a Jew), who thinks of himself as the leader of their "cartel," envisioning a rapid climb up the drug hierarchy. Together, the three subsist as squatters in an abandoned garage behind a Laundromat, eat take-out when they have the money, smoke a lot of dope and rip off other dealers when they get the chance. They epitomize the predatory, sad lives of the residents of the Mission that Plate conjures with a piercing eye for detail and mood. The existence of the three dealers is complicated by a cop named Flaherty, who shoots and kills an innocent man one day in a random street dispute. The problem is that Doojie witnesses the shooting. Flaherty tries desperately to track him down, and eventually he grows so obsessed with killing Doojie that the lawman becomes just another desperate soul in the Mission whose reckless attempts at self-preservation prove to be his undoing. Plate has written about this slice of life before (Snitch Factory; One Foot Off the Gutter), and he continues to do so with tender yet unflinching insight. His portrait of Doojie, whom he traces back to a hard, demented upbringing, stirringly shows how good people wind up doing rotten things. (June) FYI: According to the publisher, Plate himself lived as a squatter for eight years in San Francisco.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The postcard version of tourist San Francisco is nonexistent in this stirring tale of urban angst in the City by the Bay. Plate startlingly conveys the reality of the "other side" of town--where drugs and corruption are as common as cable cars and sourdough sandwiches. Doojie squats in a garage with two other dope dealers: cold and calculating Eichman and food-loving Bobo. The trio of misfits ekes out a living by selling substandard weed to a variety of colorful clients. When Doojie sees corrupt cop Flaherty shoot an innocent Mexican man, the veteran narc finds out he has a witness--and seeks to eliminate him. While Doojie tries to stay one step ahead of Flaherty, Eichman hopes to improve their lot in life by stealing better pot from other dealers. Interspersed throughout the surprisingly endearing Doojie's daily struggles are looks back at his relationship with his charismatic, troublemaking stepfather, Doojie Senior. Devoid of preaching, Plate's compelling novel offers a memorable view of the netherworld of San Francisco and its troubled but sympathetically human denizens. Jenny McLarin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; First Edition edition (May 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888363959
• ISBN-13: 978-1888363951
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,636,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peter Plate is magnificent, May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Police and Thieves: A Novel (Hardcover)

Plate is brilliant. There isn't a writer like him. Every book he has published has been a flawed masterpiece, and this one is no exception. If you only read one book this year, make Police and Thieves the one.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars uuuhhhmmm???--I DON'T THINK SO, October 8, 2010

By 

LENNY "LENNY" (CONNECTICUT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Police and Thieves: A Novel (Paperback)

I WAS BORN & RAISED IN THE MISSION DISTRICT---THIS IS NOT MY IDEA

OF REMEMBERANCE. I COULD NOT GET PAST PAGE 75, SORRY. THIS IS JUST

NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD BOOK--SORRY. ALL THROUGH THE PAGES I KEPT HIGHLIGHTING

PASSAGES AND QUESTIONING---WHAT?? / WHY??

THIS WAS MY SECOND ""PLATE"" TO TRY TO GET THRU--I DID NOT MAKE EITHER ONE.