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Loading... The Night Gardener (original 2006; edition 2007)by George Pelecanos
Work InformationThe Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (2006)
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) jgmencarini | Jul 11, 2021 |  Finished. And continued to be one of the most human cop/detective novels I've ever read. Really, very good writing, story, and characters. (  ) tmph | Sep 13, 2020 | ) Nikchick | Mar 21, 2020 |  ) bcrowl399 | Feb 4, 2018 | Pelicanos’ fame in crime fiction comes mostly from his days writing for the wildly popular HBO series “The Wire.” The novel, like the series, focuses as much on the personal lives of the investigators as it does the crime itself. The book is at its best with the murder as a backdrop, distinguishing it from the rest of the genre’s offerings. But it suffers when Pelicanos tries to force drama into the narrative using his own film-trained imagination rather than sticking to what would be accurate details in a procedural. It’s tiring to keep reading police stories where the cops ignore the law and violate basic rights, and everything works out just fine. Pelicanos almost survives his movie urges, making the book a slightly better than average police procedural. There’s no need to invent drama in these stories with improbable plot twists and cops ignoring the rules. The drama is inherent, especially when the good guys have to color in the lines to get their jobs done. Bottom Line: Slightly better than the typical police procedural. 3 ½ bones!!!!! (  )1  blackdogbooks | Aug 16, 2017 |
 Sometimes, you're reading a book and all you want to do is grab whoever's in the room and say, "Listen to this," and then read a patch of the writing out loud. Just listen to how this guy riffs on street life, you want to say. How he nails boozy guys shooting the breeze in a saloon. How powerfully he catches fear or grief -- or love -- in a sentence or two. This is what happens when you read George Pelecanos's crime fiction. Structurally, this may just be the perfect crime novel. It begins in 1985 with the murder of a 14-year-old girl in Washington DC and ends in the same place and time when all is revealed in a denouement that stops the breath. In the intervening pages, the lives of the police who were present at the original scene are revisited in a "where are they now" scenario that confirms and, subsequently, challenges the logic of our first encounter. Pelecanos rocks! The Night Gardener” is another of Mr. Pelecanos’s beautifully delineated moral tales, filled with gut-wrenching turns of fate and razor-sharp, boisterously vivid characters. George Pelecanos' engrossing crime novel -- perfect for fans of "The Wire" -- tells parallel stories of cops and criminals in Washington, D.C. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa whose body has been found in a local community garden.The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T. C. Cook. The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and now finds work as a bodyguard and driver. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the "Night Gardener" killings.The new case draws the three men together on a grim mission to finish the work that has haunted them for years. All the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them comes rushing back, and old ghosts walk once more as the men try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams. Bigger and even more unstoppable than his previous thrillers, George Pelecanos achieves in THE NIGHT GARDENER what his brilliant career has been building toward: a novel that is a perfect union of suspense, character, and unstoppable fate. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.59)
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