Words From The Front *

I'm sure I've mentioned on more than one occasion my total admiration for the works of US crime writer George Pelecanos as his work - much like, among others, his fellow American novelists Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy, plus the Scottish author Ian Rankin - which goes far beyond a simple genre and enters the realms of classic contemporary fiction.
Like the others mentioned, it is no straightforward crime committed, cops look for criminal, cops find criminal and cops either jail or shoot criminal for Pelecanos. For starters, each of his books has a superb soundtrack, whether 60s and 70s soul or punk and new wave, music is a major player in his writing - much like, now I think of it, as Ian Banks namedrops some great bands and sound in his novels. Add to the music, Pelecanos has class, economics, race and political corruption in large dollops.
The book I've just finished, Right As Rain, comes up trumps as usual. It's the first of the Strange and Quinn quartet (and is the ninth of his that I have read) and proves a real pacy, racy read. I give you the following section as a taster (both participants are former police officers, now private detectives, who are on the trail of drug dealers):

"'First thing I would do,' said Strange. 'First thing, I'd legalize drugs. Take away what they're all fightin over, cause in itself it's got no meaning anyway. It's like those MacGuffins they're always talkin about in those Alfred Hitchcock movies - just somethin to move the drama along. Legalization, it works in some of those European countries, right? You don't see this kind of crime over there. The repeal of prohibition, it stopped a lot of the same kind of things we got goin on right here, didn't it?'
'Okay. What's the other thing?'
'Make handguns illegal, nationwide. After a moratorium and a grace period, mandatory sentences for anyone caught in possession of a handgun. A pistol ain't good for nothin but killing other human beings, man.'
'You're not the first person who's thought of those things. So why isn't anyone talking about it for real?'
'Cause you put all those politicians down on the Hill in one room and you can't find one set of nuts swingin between the legs of any of em. Even the ones who know what's got to be done, they realize that comin out in favour of drug legalization and handgun illegalization will kill their careers. And the rest of them are in the pockets of the gun lobby. Meantime, nearly half the black men in this city have either been incarcerated or are in jail now.'
'You tellin me it's a black thing?'
'I'm tellin you it's a money thing. We got two separate societies in this country, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is gettin wider every day. And the really frustratin thing is...'
'No-one cares,' said Quinn.
'Not exactly. You got mentors, community activists, church groups out here, they're tryin, man, believe me. But it's not enough. More to the point, some people care, but most people care about the wrong things. Look, why does a dumb-ass, racist disc jockey make the front page and the leadoff on the TV news for weeks, when the murder of teenage black children gets buried in the back of the Metro section every day? Why do my own people write columns year after year in the Washington Post complainin that black actors don't get nominated for any Academy Awards, when they should be writin every goddamn day about the fucked-up schools in this city, got no supplies, leaking roofs, and fifteen-year-old textbooks. You got kids walkin to school in this city afraid for their lives, and once they get there they got one security guard lookin after five hundred children. How many bodyguards you think the mayor's got, huh?'
'I don't know, Derek. You askin me?'
'I'm makin a point....'"

Pure dynamite!


*Tom Verlaine