The Night Gardener

Audio book narrated by the author.
3.5*** (4**** for the book / 3*** for the audio)

Detective Gus Ramone thinks he recognizes a signature in the body of a local teen found shot in a community garden in a middle-class area of Washington DC. Twenty years ago, when he was just a rookie, Ramone and his partner Dan “Doc” Holiday” assisted veteran detective T.C. Cook in the investigation of several murders. The serial killer, dubbed “The Night Gardener” because the bodies were left in gardens, was never found. Now Ramone must wonder whether the murderer is back, or whether this is a copycat. Cook is long since retired, but the case still haunts him. Holiday is no longer on the force, having quit under a cloud of suspicion, and now show more operates a limousine service. But this boy’s death will bring all three men together in an effort to finish the work begun decades previously.

Pelecanos writes a tight, suspenseful mystery/thriller. I was completely drawn into the story and there were enough complexities to the plot to keep me guessing all the way through. The action is fast but he still takes time to carefully draw his characters, slowly revealing one layer at a time and demonstrating that the line between right and wrong, truth and justice, good guys and bad guys is frequently blurred. This is my first Pelecanos, but it won’t be my last!

Had I read the text, I would have rated this higher because the quality of the writing merited 4-stars. However, Pelecanos read the audio book himself. His lack of voice-over training means that most characters sound the same and with a fast moving plot it was sometimes hard to distinguish who was speaking. On the other hand, perhaps he was purposely going for that “jaded cop” quality. Audio gets only 3-stars. show less

Written in the language of the streets Pelecanos relates the story of the investigation of the death of Asa Johnson. Asa's body was found in a local community garden and the crime is remarkably similar to three unsolved serial killings, from a twenty-year-old case, that detective Gus Ramone remembers all too clearly. The past becomes quickly intertwined with the future dragging the original, now retired, lead detective T. C. Cook and Ramone’s ex partner “Doc” Holiday back into Ramone’s life. These three vastly different men have one soul purpose to catch the killer with or without each other.

George Pelecanos has the uncanny ability to drop the reader in the middle of a brutal crime and the stark reality of eastern Washington show more D.C's streets, peopled with gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes, and humanize it; he deftly interweaves the stories of all those involved from the victims, their families, and the neighborhood kids, to the perpetrators and the investigating police officers.

The gritty streets, violence, and stark language are what are expected but the careful construction of all of the characters, their home lives, work environments, and just the background noise of everyday life are the extras that Pelecanos delivers. It is a crime novel that becomes much larger than the crime, tackling issues of race, identity, and choice. If you are looking for a conventional crime novel, one that's neatly tied up, this isn’t it. It is a compelling, very well written story that will have you tracking down more books by George Pelecanos as soon as you set this one down. show less

The prologue to George Pelicanos’ [The Night Gardener] opens on a crime scene where a serial killer has left a new body. Unlike most police procedurals, the event is not seen through the eyes of a grizzled veteran trying to match wits with a killer of superhuman intelligence and instinct. Instead, Pelicanos puts you in two rookie’s shoes, uniforms pulling security. Standing at the crime scene tape, hoping not to screw up, we are privy to their hopes and their frailties as the dream of detective’s gold shields. The book then shifts to the same two men, twenty years on – one has achieved that gold shield, while the other has shamefully lost his job and is working as a chauffeur. They are brought together again when a new body is show more discovered in a public garden, killed in the same manner as the still unsolved serial murders from their rookie days.

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!!!!! show less

I've come to develop an appreciation for the crime novels of George Pelecanos mostly because of his terrific knowledge of Washington, DC and suburban Maryland. However, this novel took me much deeper. I liked the story greatly except for the fact that there were so many characters in it! That actually stopped being a problem after a while since the more important characters simply took over. This was a novel in which I could not predict anything that happened.

More important than the crime being solved were the story's three main characters: Detective Gus Ramone, former Detective Doc Holliday, and retired police Sergeant T.C. Cook. These men took on such lifelike characteristics during the story that I was halfway expecting to meet them show more in person on the road while driving to work. Each of these men was trying to solve a crime both by working together and, at the same time, remaining distant from each other. It was quite a dance. I loved that these men had attributes as well as faults. They made me feel how hard it must be to be a respected police officer. Yet what they did was all in a day's work.

I really admired Gus Ramone for how he handled cases, how he dealt with others, and how he treated his family. I really hope to meet him again in another Pelecanos novel! show less

Ever since we listened to THE TURNAROUND in the car last summer, I've
been wanting to read more of George Pelecanos. I found THE NIGHT
GARDENER on my shelf of TBRs and put off some other things in order to
read it. After a slight groan when I discovered a serial-killer motif,
I pressed on and wasn't sorry. This was much more than a serial-killer
novel. Pelecanos, based on my reading of two books, is someone we
really need in American literature today -- a chronicler of the
working class. He has a fine ear for dialogue and regional speech, but
more than that, he sees what's important in working class lives and he
respects the people he writes about. (If any real sociologists are reading this, I
suppose some of his characters are more show more "lower-middle" than "working"
but I tend to lump them together.)

Where THE TURNAROUND's theme was fathers and sons and brothers, THE
NIGHT GARDENER is more about friends and colleagues, although the
family theme is a strong one as well. It's also about choices -- and
one might argue that the choices Pelecanos's characters are faced with
are often of much more consequence than those their wealthier
neighbors make.

When ex-police "Doc" Holiday, sleeping off a drunk, discovers a body
in a community garden, he remembers a series of killings from his
rookie days on the force. Former colleague Gus Ramone is also
interested, because the dead teenager was a friend of his son's.
Holiday involves retired Sergeant Cook, who had investigated the
still-unsolved killings 20 years previously, in a very unofficial
investigation, while the police do their procedural thing. Meanwhile,
we also see the lives of two cousins, one an ex-con and the other a
would-be criminal legend, and the choices they make. It doesn't become
clear until late in the book why this plotline is there, but it does
add to the book. Highly recommended; I'm glad to have "discovered"
Pelecanos and happy there are quite a few more books to read. show less

I can't call this book a thriller. It is so much more. It is, simply, the best crime novel I've read in several years. This book was my first introduction to George Pelecanos, and already I've added several more of his books to my TBR pile.

The Night Gardener begins in 1985, at the scene of a homicide committed by a serial killer known as "the night gardener"who has been targeting teenage victims. It is here that we are first introduced to three police officers: patrolmen Gus Ramone and Dan Holiday, and detective T.C. Cook. We are offered only a brief glimpse before the novel jumps to 2005. Gus Ramone, now a detective, divides his time between work and family. Dan Holiday is a cop no longer, but provides chauffeur services with security show more to the wealthy. T.C. Cook, now retired, is haunted by the faces of the serial killers victims, and longs to bring the killer to justice. The discovery of another homicide that bears remarkable similarities to the unsolved cases of twenty years ago brings these three men together.

Let me start my review with a warning. The dialogue in this book is extremely raw, including almost constant profanity and vulgar references. That being said, Pelecanos writes some of the best dialogue I've ever read. Personally, I wish the language could have been cleaner, but it might not have felt so authentic if that had been the case.

The Night Gardener really surprised me, in a good way. I was expecting a page-turning murder mystery which would resolve itself in a tidy black and white ending by the last page. Instead, I found a book which was almost a constant shade of gray, and which compelled me to keep reading because of the powerful questions it made me ask myself. I was especially impressed with the ending of the novel. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll simply say that for me I don't feel that it could have ended any other way.

I also appreciated that Pelecanos avoided so many of the typical plot devices that are present in so many crime novels. For once, I appreciated reading about a police officer who was a devoted husband and father, as opposed to a self-destructive hero. I was also fascinated by Pelecanos presentation of the racial tensions that are present in Washington D.C., and I appreciated that he was able to present more than one viewpoint. Pelecanos has made a fan of me with this one.

If you are looking for a crime novel with true substance, you can't do better than this. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the potty talk. show less

Publisher: 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 show more 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.

My Thoughts: George Pelecanos' The Night Gardener is not your typical crime drama. Pelecanos, a contributing writer on HBO's critically-acclaimed series, The Wire, doesn't just write crime dramas. He writes character studies set against the back drop of crime. What makes The Night Gardener so engrossing is Pelecanos' understanding of human nature, his awareness that people are both good and bad, and his ability to portray these qualities in his characters whether they are perpetrators, victims or investigators. It is this skill that makes The Night Gardener a book that people from all walks of life can identify with and enjoy.

We see this dichotomy in the main character of Gus Ramone, for example, who has his share of dilemmas (moral, professional and otherwise) at work and at home. As a cop, Ramone prides himself on doing his job by the book but struggles over what to do when his usual ways won't get him the results he needs. He's never respected cops who he considered "loose cannons" like former police officer Dan Holliday, whom he believes, willingly and easily stepped over the line to solve. But the day Ramone works a case that's become personal, more to him than just the job, he begins to see things differently. He finds himself questioning whether things really are as black and white as he believes or if, sometimes, passion and desire dictate approaching things from a different angle.

On the home front, in his role as parent, he faces a dilemma regarding his son's education. He loves and trusts his son, Diego, but knows it's hard out in the world beyond the family home's front door. Dangerous elements, bad influences and temptations abound - all the things every concerned parent worries about. So Ramone, after he and his wife discuss it together (while Ramone agonizes over it alone), places Diego in a "better" private school. There he discovers a different set of problems that may be far worse than his son faced while in DC's public school system. Such life changing choices leads Ramone to be constantly second guessing himself. And who among us hasn't undergone that kind of inner struggle, that personal turmoil that makes us wish life wasn't so hard? Ramone's wife is there with him, a constant companion and source of moral support. A confidante. But Ramone, it seems, is ultimately the one on who's shoulders many of these burdens rest, and we hope he eventually finds some peace of mind while trying to achieve the American dream - to be a success at his job and raise a law-abiding, well-educated family in the face of an increasingly hostile and often indifferent society.

When it comes to Ramone's wife, who happens to be a former police officer, and his partner, also a woman, Rhonda Willis, one wishes Pelaconos would have devoted more time to fleshing them out. Since the book comes in at a taut 365 pages, (which goes by at nearly light speed anyway), spending an additional few chapters providing insight into their psyches, their hopes, fears and inspirations, would have been refreshing. Though they offer well-needed and well-timed comic support and witty dialogue, it sometimes seems that's the only reason they are there. Unfortunately, as such they come off as ancillary to the story. They deserve more and we deserve to see Pelecanos turn his knack for writing introspective, distinctive and keen characters to women..

That, I feel, is about all that is warranted by way of criticism for this otherwise exciting and engrossing book. The high points heavily outweigh the shortcomings, and the dialogue, which makes up much of The Night Gardener, is clearly one of its major strengths. Pelecanos excels at subtly introducing ideas and themes through the characters' discussions. The brutally honest way in which Pelecanos' characters communicate and the often "colorful" language used is bound to cause discomfort for some readers. But without it, the book would not ring as true. In cities everywhere, (and why should D.C., the setting, be any different?), for many of the cops and criminals, peppering their language with curses, crude words and expletives comes as natural as breathing. This allows for the graphic dialogue in The Night Gardner to be employed as a tool that makes people confront some bitter truths about the way things really are. If this comes at a cost of discomfort to some readers, all the better as it then serves as a sort of wake up call to some of life's harsher aspects.

In summary, don't make the mistake of pigeonholing this book as "just" a crime drama. As I said earlier, the crime is really just the background for the people in the story. Not just good guys and bad guys. But people with relationships to each other, family members, friends, co-workers and more. It's about people and how they live, what they say and how they try and survive in today's society, rife with all the hard hitting and often ugly pitfalls that come with it. So, if you like crime dramas, if you like character studies, if you like novels that read like factual accounts, read Pelecanos books especially The Night Gardener. show less