The Sweet Forever

It feels odd to review a novel 13 years after its publication, but as I'm working my way through George Pelecanos' extensive catalog, I guess it's bound to happen. This is yet another example of his ability to take an incident that is just a part of life in a major city, a traffic accident, and create a masterful story about what really happened and its repercussions.

I won't go into the plot, which I'm sure you can glean from the product description on this site. What I like to do when I review is to compare a book to the mental checklist I have on what I like in the particular genre. I also like to determine if there's anything distinctive that makes it stand out or reminds me of other authors or novels.

The coolest thing The Sweet show more Forever has going for it is that it's like opening a time capsule of the mid-1980's. The author does a great job evoking the music, clothing, hairstyles, drug use, etc. from that era. As with his other novels, Pelecanos uses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music to great effect, and it truly produces an aural soundtrack for the story line. He incorporates music heavily into most (all? don't know, haven't finished the lot) of his books, but this time it seems a little different just because of the '80s time slice for the story.

The story is believable and the characters react in predictably unpredictable ways. The dialogue is crisp and life-like, which is one of the author's great strengths. In a lot of ways he reminds me of another favorite, Elmore Leonard- he really 'owns' the genre in a city (Leonard in Detroit, GP in DC), he writes great dialogue, his stories aren't about FBI mastermind crime solvers going after criminal masterminds but more about 'blue collar' lower-level street criminals. I think the thing I like best about him is that he creates characters that are really in the 'grey area'.... the good guys aren't really all that good, the bad guys have some redeeming qualities (at least some of them), the cops have seemingly the same good-to-evil continuum, and there's a number of side characters that contribute color and depth.

This is another Pelecanos gem that I can't recommend highly enough. show less

Surprisingly sappy ending for this one. The music references, dated as they are, struck quite a nerve, especially to California bands like Thin White Rope and Dream Syndicate. A character's description of the singer of the former was hilarious, even though they were one of my favorites.
Drugs are bad!

too much basketball. too much music. sad to think that marcus's business is probably gone now. too big to survive. i hope he sold it.
good. satisfying story.

The second in this series of hard-boiled novels set in 1980s Washington D.C.