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From Amazon
In Hell to Pay, Washington, D.C., is just one more thug in an endless list of thugs who brutalize the poor, the weak, and the young. The primary victim this time is a rising star on Derek Strange's Pee Wee football team. In this city where making T-shirts for bereaved families of young murder victims is a full-time business, the boy is an accidental victim in a war between drug dealers and lowlifes.
Private investigator Strange, in his second George Pelecanos outing (after 2001's Right as Rain), has seen enough of this face of D.C. His relationship to his secretary/lover Janine sputters in the wake of increasing, irrational infidelities. His moral compass swings wildly as he tracks the killers, Garfield "Death" Potter and friends. Not knowing if he can be satisfied seeing these men in prison, Strange contemplates other brands of "justice."
For fans of Pelecanos, all the usual trappings are here: the hyper-real dialogue, the bloody street fights, the immersion in classic R&B, and the most current music on the streets. Pelecanos does stumble in a few places. His narrative becomes wooden at times, and his plot features a couple of glaring coincidences (e.g., Strange just happens to jot down the license plate of a car that later turns out to be the one driven by the murderers). But Pelecanos is the real deal in noir. If Dennis Lehane owns Boston and Michael Connelly is master of L.A., Pelecanos is dark D.C.'s intimate chronicler. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
You know you're in Pelecanos country when the music begins early a trio of street thugs on their way to a dogfight listen to "the new DMX joint on PGC, turned up loud" and continues to throb all the way through this second book in the author's hardboiled and heartbreaking series centered around Washington, D.C., private detective Derek Strange. A black man in his 50s, Strange first notices these particular thugs when they hang out around a Pee Wee football team he is coaching. Their appearance comes to seem more sinister in retrospect, when Strange's nine-year-old star quarterback is shot and killed at an ice cream stand. While Strange hunts for the men who shot the boy, his partner, Terry Quinn, an Irish Catholic ex-cop, gets pulled into an attempt to save a young runaway turned prostitute from a big-time pimp and falls for one of the tough women organizing the rescue. Meanwhile, Strange goes through a rocky period with his longtime lover (and secretary) Janine, forced to consider what his massage-parlor habit is doing to their relationship. The novel's turf the nontourist parts of Washington, D.C., neighborhoods where so many young black children die that selling T-shirts with their pictures on them at their wakes and funerals has become a cottage industry was staked out successfully in Pelecanos's earlier books about the sons and grandsons of Greek immigrants and now is extended to focus chiefly on the District's black majority. It is Pelecanos's intimate understanding of this volatile D.C. and the complexity of Strange a rich, sometimes frustrating but always warmly human character that should keep this series fresh for a long time to come. (Feb. 19)Forecast: Little, Brown is betting $100,000 in marketing dollars (not to mention a 20-city author tour) that this will be the book that propels cult favorite Pelecanos onto the bestseller lists and they may be right. Few writers deserve a boost as much as the hardworking, fearlessly gritty and engagingly idiosyncratic Pelecanos.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hell of a Read!,
By Sal Paradise "ethanallen95" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hell to Pay (Mass Market Paperback)
I really enjoyed this second novel in the Derek Strange series. HELL TO PAY is an action novel from beginning to end with a great deal of substance in between. I didn't read any of the Derek Strange books in order. I read this novel after reading SOUL CIRCUS. I found out how Terry Quinn got that scar on his face from his run in with a seemingly larger than life pimp named Worldwide. The character Terry seems a lot more developed in this novel than in SOUL CIRCUS. This novel develops both characters personal lives such that they actually seem more like three dimensional characters. I've yet to read HARD REVOLUTION to find out the connection between Granville Oliver's father and Strange. Granville Oliver is the fictional drug kingpin introduced towards the end of this novel who figures more prominently in SOUL CIRCUS. I found this novel a joy to read it's a serial novel but newcomers to the series can pick up any of the Derek Strange novels and start from any point in the series.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hell to Read,
By
This review is from: Hell to Pay (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm not a big fan of crime fiction, but I had read some good reviews on this story in some Men's magazine and figured I'd pick it up. Thankfully I had the sense to borrow it form the library instead of purchasing it."Hell to Pay" was insanely boring. This would be the perfect novel to turn into a Steven Segall movie because it is already lacking a plot. Pelecanos jumps around way too much, and at too many times when he should be fleshing out the story more or adding some more action, which "Hell" is seriously devoid of. It seems like he used this book as a chance to describe the seedier side of Washington and to mention all of the urban hip-hop artists he knows rather than trying to tell an entertaining story.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best of the year,
By
This review is from: Hell to Pay (Mass Market Paperback)
One of today's finest writers of crime fiction is George Pelecanos. He has previously written the "Washington quartet"-- a group of books, actually historical mysteries, that took place over a number of years and shared characters. His latest series concerns PIs Derek Strange and Terry Quinn. Strange started Strange Investigations and hired Quinn, a retired police officer. I considered the first book in the series, RIGHT AS RAIN, to be one of the best books of last year.Several separate plots are occurring simultaneously. Strange and Quinn are hired to recover a fourteen year old girl working as a prostitute for Worldwide Wilson, a hardened operative. One of the problems is that the girl does not want to go home. Another plot concerns three homicidal young men who want to knock off a man who owes them money. The man is an uncle to one of the boys playing on Strange's youth football team that he coaches. When the boy becomes involved, Strange and Quinn want vengeance. HELL TO PAY is another sterling example of what makes George Pelecanos one of the best. He is a master of characters and dialogue. They reflect the highly realistic milieu of the nation's capital where this series takes place. He successfully balances these superb characterizations with a truly riveting plot. The book is also just the right size. Other practitioners of the crime fiction art would do very well to read and learn from this very, very fine writer. One of the best of the year.
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