Customer Reviews

The Sweet Forever

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you haven't read George P. Pelecanos, you're missing one hell of an experience! This is easily his best book and that's saying alot, since he's yet to make a misstep with any of his crime/detective novels.

_The Sweet Forever_ is a beautifully- done book (one of the jacket blurbs likens it to a crime-thriller version of _Bonfire of the Vanities_, a particularly apt comparison, I think). It is the second book to feature the team of Dimitri Karras/Marcus Clay (first introduced in _King Suckerman_), two old friends now running a chain of D.C.-based record stores.

The book is set in 1986, when cocaine was at its peak of popularity and just before the advent of crack. The streets of Washington D. C. are growing ever more dangerous and the town continues to dwindle and wither away, ignored by a corrupt, drug-using mayor and his regime.

Dimitri and Marcus run afoul of a gang of cocaine runners in the neighborhood of Marcus' new store,located in a particularly run-down part of the city. He's trying to put something back into the community, so he's willing to put up with slow sales. But when the gang members start pushing around young kids in the area, Marcus gets involved, almost against his better judgement.

One of the neat things about the book is that Dimitri himself is hooked on cocaine and his habit is dragging him down further and further, only he himself is not aware of this yet. The novel gets only that much more morally complex when one of the two leads is involved, however slightly, in the very drug trade that is ruining the city and which the characters must battle with.

There are so many great scenes here and great characters. Marcus has a huge heart and is willing to go out on the line for people that some might ignore or turn their backs on. Add in a corrupt cop whose conscience keeps digging at him and a drug runner who isn't sure about what he's doing, and you've got one memorable mixture.

I'm a sucker for emotional movies, I'll admit. Play my heartstrings and I get a lump in my throat just like that. But I very seldom, if ever, have the same response to the written word. When reading this book, however, I had more "throat-lump" moments than I could keep track of. This is very highly recommended and a perfect example of how the lowly "crime thriller" can operate far outside the boundaries of its genre. This is literature, folks!

This is a flat out terrific book. Pelecanos weaves an intriguing story about a search for some stolen drug money, a battle for control of a neighborhood and a number of characters looking for a different direction for their lives. The scene descriptions are vivid and the character development is superb. Exactly what else would you be looking for in a crime novel?

As a confirmed Pelecanos fan now after reading several of his books, I'd recommend a couple of things to anyone considering reading his work. First, if you like tough, gritty crime novels, definitely read his work. It is excellent. Second, I think you're better off by reading the old stuff before the newer work. The reason for this is that a number of the characters appear in multiple books and if you know a character will show up in a later work as an older person, you know they didn't get killed in the earlier work.

Set in Washington DC in the last 1980s, this is a very well done cops and robbers genre detective novel - but then it is much more. Part of why I loved this book was because it was set in a city I know so well that it was a little like being at home. The characters in Pelecanos' story are dirty cops, drug runners and pushers, a couple of record store managers, a couple of street kids (who might or might not go bad), and a backdrop of March Madness in a city that was cheering on the magnificent Len Bias (at U Maryland) the year he suddenly dropped dead (weak heart + cocaine) at the tender age of 22. The book opens with a number of interesting witnesses to a horrible car crash on U Street in which the driver (a drug-runner, we later learn) is decapitated, and the bag containing all his money is snatched impetuously out of the back seat by a bystander who regrets it later. The tale weaves in and out of, primarily, Marcus Clay's (the record store owner) and his buddy, Dimitri Karras's (the manager of the stores) lives during these events. The prose is excellent for a crime novel, and I am eager to continue reading Pelecanos.

The Sweet Forever is a well done and engrossing crime novel. Pelecanos' story shifts from the Washington DC gang members to the corrupt cops to honest people just trying to get by and back again. It's not really about one crime, like a murder that must be solved. Rather it concerns a chain reaction of events which occur after a bag of drug money is taken from a flaming car. The characters are real and will stay with you after you put the novel down. The resolution is satisfying--nothing canned or predictible here. The Sweet Forever is an enjoyable, engrossing read.

Writers dislike being compared to one another, but readers find the shorthand of similarities helpful when searching for new authors to read. Take the hard edged tone and flare for local color of James Crumley, give him an ethnic Greek background and raise him in Washington, D.C. and you will discover George P. Pelecanos, one of the finest but least recognized writers of crime fiction in America today. One can only hope that The Sweet Forever, Pelecanos' seventh novel, corrects that latter fact.

Think of a novel of suspense set in Washington and grand monuments and politics come to mind. That is, after all, all that most of us know about our nation's capital. But Washington is a real city as well, a city apart from national politics where ordinary people of all sorts live and work and die. This is Pelecanos' Washington, and he knows it well. His characters do not live at the Watergate or work on Capitol Hill. They live in neighborhoods never seen on the nightly! news and work in diners and discount appliance stores, listen to local bands in bars no tourists ever stumble into and, on occasion, become embroiled in the 'meat and potatos' crimes that serve as the stock in trade of mysteries.

The Sweet Forever embroils Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay, recurring Pelecanos characters, in a cocaine ring's search for stolen money. Cops on the take and the already frightening lives of children on the pre-crack D.C. streets of the 1980s intertwine the plot line against the backdrop of the NCAA basketball tournament the year U. Maryland's Len Bias enthrawlled the city's many round ball fans. The pacing is brisk, the characterizations and dialogue believable, and the net effect is a thoroughly enjoyable read. (Non-fans of basketball may have to ask a friend why the novel ends as it does, but this is a small point.)

The book does suffer, however, from underediting -- a weakness of several of his earlier novels. Someone should have insisted ! on deleting the incessant naming of some particular musicia! n playing some particular song from some particular album in scene after scene after scene. It is a tedious self-indulgence of Pelecanos that distracts from his otherwise strong writing. Even so, Pelecanos deserves a wider readership with The Sweet Forever and serious consideration from the folks who pass out the Edgars. Aside from changing for the better readers' sense of my home town (There, I've admitted my bias!), Pelecanos will engage and entertain those readers with The Sweet Forever, and then with each other fine offering in his generational, urban tapestry.

So many books get five-star reviews. Then one like The Sweet Forever comes along and I want to go back and downgrade everything else. Pelecanos' characters come alive. The plot whips around like real life. And the action pops. What a book. This guy just gets better and better.

Pelecanos is one of those elusive writers who avoids (either by design or subject matter) the spotlight. Like James Crumley, his body of work is substantial and applauded by those who continually seek him out. He seemingly has yet to break into the Top 40, to coin a music phrase he would probably agree with, but it seems inevitable.

Marcus Clay, up from mean streets, is a successful record store owner. Actually four record stores. So successful, Pelecanos points out, his wife Elaine has left him.

Right there is an extraordinary subtlety. Pelecanos paints his black characters with the same confusing mish-mosh of emotional color as he does his white characters, saying, 'we are all the same, all confused, all looking for love, losing it, trying to recapture it.'

Marcus resists the encroachment of drug dealers in the location of his stores and that resistance turns not surprisingly to bloodshed.

Karras, his colorblind Greek friend, suffers the moral dilemma of his own drug habit and recognition of the consequences of his acts.

Very compelling; very noir. Highly recommensded.

The only caveat I might suggest is that you may want to read some of the earlier works to get a better grip on the personality of the characters. Kudos.

"The Sweet Forever" is the first George P. Pelecanos book that I've read, but it won't be the last. Like most gifted writers, Pelecanos writes rich-bodied characters with all of their phallacies and strengths. However, what sets Pelecanos apart from the others is his ability to capture the time and the place so successfully. Gary Phillips, author of the Ivan Monk Mysteries, which are set in Los Angeles, and Grace Edwards, author of Mali Anderson Mysteries, set in Harlem, New York, have similiar gifts for capturing the essense of the era in the black community. Washington, DC, in the mid-1980's is no easy read. A city where the mayor and those close to him were convicted of crimes while congress sat less than a mile away issuing edicts and strangling the eagle until it screamed and caused the city's infrastructure to fail. On a philosophical level, Pelecanos is on target with the sermons that he sometimes delivers through his characters, but he fails to go far enough. Washington, D. C. was in the 80s and is today the last working plantation.

I think Pelecanos is much, much more interested in his characters than the average suspense writer, and he knows that adulthood changes in point-of-view and lifestyle are much more hard fought than what you see on Melrose Place. That is what makes this work a superior novel. The action/violence/posturing is a direct extention of the characters and their interaction and not some hackneyed device used to advance the plot or juice it up.

My only disappointment is that the author reveals a sentimental side once too often (the resolutions are a bit too tidy), and, in places, it was roll-your-eyes forced. Since the world he creates is so bleak and brutal, that is a forgivable offense. In fact, it was kind of a nice break to see some humanity anywhere, even if it was clearly coming from the writer and not his characters.

Set in Washington DC in the mid-1980s, the drug of choice has now changed from marijuana to cocaine. Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay are featured again, as in King Suckerman, but Nick Stefanos (both the older and younger) make appearances. To avoid confusion, it is highly recommended that before reading this book you try reading a couple of Pelecanos' earlier books, particularly The Big Blowdown and King Suckerman which are the earlier of this particular series.

In this book, a drug car smashes and bursts into flames outside Marcus Cray's Real Right record store. Someone waiting outside the record store walks over to the car and takes a pillowcase filled with money out of the burning car. When the local gang-leader, and owner of the money, finds out about the theft of his dough, he's not very happy and seeks to regain his money. Dimitri and Marcus are drawn into this fight because of their proximity to the original accident.

Once again, the mood of the book is set by the use of street talk by the characters, the description of the music they listen to, and the ongoing NCAA basketball tournament of the day. As with all Pelecanos books, the drug culture is strongly featured and appears to have gripped Dimitri pretty tightly now. This is the third of a series of four books, with the fourth title being Shame the Devil.