Pelecanos, George P

Boston. 2002. Little Brown. Advance Reading Copy. Very Good in Wrappers. 674 pages. paperback. keywords: Mystery Washington DC America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - HELL TO PAY - Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of investigators who made their bestselling debut in RIGHT AS RAIN, are hired to find a fourteen-year-old girl who's run away from her home in the suburbs. It's easy for Strange and Quinn to learn that the girl is now working as a prostitute in one of D.C.'s most brutal neighborhoods. Getting her to leave is harder. The two ex-cops think they know this world - but nothing in their experience has prepared them for the vengeance of Worldwide Wilson, the ruthless operator whose territory they are intruding upon. Their mission is fractured by a violent criminal act against a young player from the neighborhood football team that Strange coaches. Tracking down the perpetrators becomes a point of honor for Strange and Quinn, and their investigation leads them deep inside the city's labyrinth of crime-and back, again, to the lethal Worldwide Wilson. RIGHT AS RAIN - George Pelecanos, ‘one of those dangerous writers who aren't afraid to take risks' (New York Times], delivers a brilliant and blazingly fast-paced novel about family secrets and retribution set on the dark side of Washington, D.C. - the side that politicians and diplomats never dare to enter. Derek Strange is an ex-cop who's making a good living with his own business, a detective agency called Strange Investigations. A new case hits him close to home: A police officer has been slain by another policeman in a confusing late-night clash, and the dead officer's mother asks Strange to help her make sense of his killing. That mother's request sends Strange into the darkest chasms of the D.C. underworld, where police officers and criminals operate by their own secret laws, and where human life is sometimes of less consequence than cash, drugs, and other forms of currency. Strange is joined in his quest by Terry Quinn, the officer who was exonerated in the police inquiry into the shooting but who is still haunted by that terrifying night. inventory #30286