It’s the spring of ’86 in Washington D.C. and while Reagan may technically be in charge of the country, cocaine is ruling the streets.
Marcus Clay is tIt’s the spring of ’86 in Washington D.C. and while Reagan may technically be in charge of the country, cocaine is ruling the streets.
Marcus Clay is trying to run the record stores he owns and catch as many of the college basketball tournament games as possible on TV. Unfortunately, the record business could be better, he and his wife are separated, and his best friend and employee Dimitri Karras has a growing coke habit. When a drug runner wrecks his car right outside one of Marcus’ shops somebody snatches the money out of the car before the cops show up, and that kicks off a series of events that eventually find Marcus and Dimitri mixed up with drug dealers and dirty cops.
This is set 10 years after King Suckerman which also featured Marcus and Dimitri, but much like that one this isn’t just their story. In fact, they’re almost supporting players in this although much of it is filtered to us through their experiences. As always, Pelecanos manages to create an authentic sense of time and place by constantly working in the music, clothes, cars, and television shows of the time, but those are just the details. Where he really shines in telling us what it’s life is like for these characters whether it’s Dimitri going out for a drug fueled night of partying or a dirty cop struggling to deal with his wife’s mental health issues.
The story of the money is the connective thread that makes this a crime novel, but what Pelecanos is really doing is telling us the story of D.C. at a certain time and place. There’s a sense of impending doom over this one with many characters noting how the drugs and street crime are taking over the city, and crack was on the horizon. Pelecanos has characters casually mention rumors that the mayor is a drug addict as well as a local basketball star which are hints at how much worse things will get if you’re familiar with their true stories.
This is Pelecanos following his usual template, and he was already very good at using that to write compelling stories....more
The more things change the more they stay the same. For example, Lucas Davenport may not be a cop anymore, but that doesn’t mean that he’s done chasinThe more things change the more they stay the same. For example, Lucas Davenport may not be a cop anymore, but that doesn’t mean that he’s done chasing killers.
Lucas got fed up with certain elements of his old gig as a state investigator in Minnesota so he quit, but he’s still the first call that the governor makes when he needs a bloodhound. The gov is now running for president, and he got a bad vibe off some people he met on the primary campaign trail in Iowa. He fears that some whackos plan to do more than just vote for him and are going to assassinate the leading candidate of his party, Michaela Bowden. Davenport is soon tracing a network of political crackpots whose first instinct is to accuse him of being part of a federal conspiracy when he tries to talk to any of them.
This follows the standard formula of the Prey novels in giving us the parallel stories of Lucas and the people he’s hunting. This time the villains are a middle aged woman and her son whose hard economic circumstances as rural farm folks have convinced them that Bowden is part of a system that has been deliberately keeping them down. When they learn that Davenport is trying to find them they desperately try to divert and stall him until they can pull off their plan, and their methods include murder.
Once again Sandford delivers a tremendously satisfying thriller. One of the great things about his books is that they depend on the bad guys being clever, but there are no Insane McGeniuses pulling off Bond villain levels of schemes. Instead they’re just people whose view of the world is about 10 degrees off center combined with certain paranoid and ruthless tendencies that make them dangerous but not unstoppable killing machines. Likewise, Davenport is as smart, capable, determined, and sometimes ruthless as you'd want the lead of this kind of book to be, but he isn’t some bulletproof action hero or a Sherlock Holmes type of detective either.
Sandford also still has a reporter’s instincts for having the pulse of current events as well as a knack for tapping into them for stories. Here, with a female presidential candidate campaigning in a time where an overworked sense of outrage and conspiracy theories have helped create an environment of seething political hatred that is immune to facts, logic, or common decency, we get a story that seems all too plausible. However, Davenport blessedly remains pretty much apolitical with little interest in who gets elected or getting drawn into debates.
You also have to give Sandford credit for being willing to shake up a winning formula this deep into a series. Shifting Davenport from a big shot Minnesota cop who can make things happen by picking up a phone to a guy without a badge wandering around Iowa makes for him going through an interesting adjustment. At times not being subject to the usual rules is an advantage he can use, but Lucas finds himself frequently frustrated with his lack of authority in these circumstances. It’s a nice bridge to what seems to be a new era in the series, and as a long time Sandford fan I’m excited to see what comes next for Davenport.
One side note: I’ve gotten several comments on my Sandford reviews asking if you can just read one book or if you need to complete the series for it to make sense. (My standard response is that most of the books are self-contained stories that can be read alone, but you will know how some events in previous Davenport books turned out from casual references. There are also a couple that do act as direct sequels to earlier ones.) This would be an excellent place for anyone who hasn’t read them to jump in because it’s the start of a new phase for the series with Davenport interacting with mostly new characters so it��s pretty light on the previous elements, but still has all the hallmarks of what makes them such great crime thrillers.
“My life has become a single on-going revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.”
This is the kind of cheery thought one is apt to have when facing“My life has become a single on-going revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.”
This is the kind of cheery thought one is apt to have when facing a narcissistic megalomaniac who has gained power by convincing some people that all their problems can be blamed on other groups while setting humanity on a self-destructive path it may not be able to recover from.
Geez, I thought I read science-fiction to escape reality.
The Expanse series took an epic dark turn in the last one, and this book is mainly about dealing with the fall-out from that as well as trying to resolve the new threat that arose. The short term stakes involve a fight to control the outposts outside of Earth and Mars, but the longer view will determine nothing less than the fate of humanity itself.
Like the other books this has a self-contained story that features all kinds of political intrigue and strategy as well as a healthy dose of interesting characters riding around in spaceships being all Pew-Pew!. Which is what The Expanse does really well as a general rule. The new wrinkle here is that because this is the aftermath of catastrophic events that there’s a tone of shock and even a certain wistfulness in this one. Things will never be what they once where and everyone knows it. This makes the conflict here literally a fight for the future, and all the characters are under enormous amounts of pressure because of it.
There was one element I wasn’t entirely happy about. (view spoiler)[ I absolutely loved the set up at the end that the Rocinante crew is essentially facing an Alamo situation where their best option is to die well while taking as many of their enemies with them as they can. However, it seemed like more than a little bit of cheat that they simply manage to make the Free Navy ships vanish via the ring gates, and it seems way too easy of an end for Marcos Inaros. (hide spoiler)] On the other hand there’s still story to be told so I’m trying to set aside any feelings of mild disappointment I have about the ending here because it’s likely that there is more pay-off coming.
As always after finishing one of these I’m left wanting more and am already counting the days until the next book releases. It helps that we’ve got the second season of the TV show coming to fill the gap between books....more
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by“Hello, Mr. Ellroy.”
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by the unsolved murder of your mother which occurred when you were a child and led you to become obsessed with crime and women. You frequently dreamed of scenarios in which you could save damsels in distress. You let your rich fantasy life rule you and with no ambition or discipline you became a homeless drunk and drug addict in your teens. You eventually hit bottom and got sober. You became a writer and used your fascination with true crime and post-war Los Angeles to create what you called the L.A. Quartet. You started with a fictionalized version of the Black Dahlia case, and one of the books, L.A. Confidential, became an acclaimed movie. You wrote a trilogy called Underworld USA that followed bad men doing bad things in the shadows of recent American history. You investigated the death of your mother with an ex-cop and published the results as a memoir. You wrote a second autobiography in which you admitted that much of what you wrote about your state of mind in the first book wasn’t true. You recently published a new novel called Perfidia that you state is the start of a new Second L.A. Quartet.
“What are your impressions of Perfidia? Please be brief.”
“Perfidia begins the day before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese. Many of the characters are ones you used in other books like Dudley Smith, a corrupt police officer who was a large part of the L.A. Quartet, and Kay Lake from The Black Dahlia. Others are based on real life people like William ‘Whiskey Bill’ Parker, another LAPD officer who would go on to become the chief of police. A new addition is a brilliant police crime scene technician, Hideo Ashida, of Japanese descent. The murder of a Japanese family coincides with the news of the attack, and the investigation takes place as L.A. is consumed by a mixture of patriotism and paranoia. Corruption enters the scene immediately with many people scheming on ways to profit from the war even as the ships are still burning at Pearl Harbor.”
“That’s a summary. I asked for your impressions.”
“There is a lot here to appeal to your fans. The wartime setting with a mystery that blends fiction with history against a L.A. that is completely corrupt is something that you know how to utilize to provide a gritty noir atmosphere. Your plotting with the characters aligning and betraying each other almost at whim is as dense and intricate as ever. Your style of short sentences in a stream of consciousness patter as the perspective shifts from character to character is still sharp, and you retain the knack of writing scenes of brutal violence that seem to pass in moments yet leave lasting effects.”
“That’s the positive side. Please tell me where you think the book was lacking.”
“While some longtime fans will be delighted at the way you’ve incorporated so many characters from your other books, it also brings some of the problems inherent to prequels into the mix.”
“Explain.”
“If you know that a character is alive and has a career with the police department in a book set after Perfidia, then I know that they will not die or lose their job in this book despite anything that may occur. This naturally removes some of the drama.”
“Naturally. Please continue.”
“If not done well, the characters may act in ways or accumulate knowledge that seems at odds with the other incarnation. For example,(view spoiler)[ the idea that Dudley Smith is the father of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, is something that is pretty shocking and wasn’t even hinted at that I can recall in his previous appearances. (hide spoiler)]
“I understand the point. Move on."
“Usually your books take place over a period of months or years. This allows for on-going events and new information to change the perspectives and motives of characters. Since this novel occurs entirely in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor, the time frame is greatly condensed from your usual work yet you incorporate as many betrayals, shocking revelations and changes of allegiances as your other books. This makes all of the characters seem rushed and erratic. Plus, everyone in the book seems to have an amazing ability to look into the future. None of the major players seem that concerned about the war with the Japanese. All of them somehow immediately know that the war will be won and that there will future tension between America and Russia.”
“Are there any other things you consider shortcomings of the book you would like to share?
“You also use some of the same phrases and tricks here that seem in danger of becoming tropes of your work.”
“State some examples.”
“Using short sentences to indicate a series of actions. For example, ‘Dudley winked. Dudley scratched. Dudley howled….’“
“And?”
“And characters making instant judgments and psychoanalysis of each other that is 100% accurate.”
“And?”
“And repeatedly using the word ‘and’ as a way of continuing the flow of information.”
“Very droll, Mr. Kemper. And?”
“And you really got into this thing where a lot of the dialogue is someone demanding information in a blunt and condescending fashion. You used to save that for when one had a definite edge on another, like J. Edgar Hoover interrogating an underling, but it seemed like it happened on almost every page in this book. These conversations also frequently have one person delivering a set of orders.”
“You have communicated your viewpoint, Mr. Kemper. You will write up a review on Perfidia. You will give it no less than three stars. You may bring up the points you have outlined here, but you will still credit my work as still being an enjoyable read. You will also praise my ability to create damaged characters operating in amoral ways for selfish reasons at a street level and use them to illustrate broader themes on subjects like the effect of History on the individual. Once you have completed this review, you will post it on Goodreads. If you don’t do this, I’ll engage in another trope of mine, and have you shot in the face repeatedly. Do you agree, Mr. Kemper?”
“One three star review of Perfidia coming right up!”
In the summer of ‘76 best buddies Marcus Clay and Demetri Karras are spending their free time playing pick-up basketball games while everyone in WashiIn the summer of ‘76 best buddies Marcus Clay and Demetri Karras are spending their free time playing pick-up basketball games while everyone in Washington DC is buzzing about the upcoming bicentennial celebration and a new blaxplotation flick called King Suckerman. As a Vietnam veteran and owner of a record shop Marcus is the more grown-up of the two while Demetri has no ambition beyond being a small time pot dealer. When Marcus accompanies Demetri to buy some weed the two end up in confrontation that makes them instant enemies of the dangerous Wilton Cooper and his gang of killers.
The two main characters are the strongest part with Marcus being the hard worker who has a sense of responsibility that doesn’t allow him to let things slide. Demetri is the flip side of this as the slacker who despite being a decent guy deep down can always find an excuse to take the easy way out. Despite their differences Pelecanos creates a believable bond between the two, and he often uses similar types of people in his other novels. He also builds up a great cast of supporting players around them including the murderous Wilton Cooper.
The other great aspect is Pelecanos’ ability to evoke the setting of Washington DC of a certain time. By using a mix of local history and geography combined with vivid descriptions of cars, clothes, food, and especially music, Pelecanos makes you feel like you’re driving in an Dodge Charger with the 8-track cranked up on your way to catch a late showing of King Suckerman.
It’s also incredibly patient novel that isn’t filled with action. It’s very easy to get caught up with Marcus and Demetri as well as the other characters as they just go about their lives with nothing huge happening. You can even forget that this is a crime novel at heart which makes the violence that much more shocking and awful when it does come.
This is the first novel by George Pelecanos I ever bought, and I got my old 1998 paperback copy of it signed a few months back when I got to meet him at a book singing. That prompted this long overdue reread, and it gave me a new appreciation for what he does in these books....more
Kidd is an artist who uses his computer skills to pay the bills that selling paintings wListen all y'all, it's a sabotage.
Corporate sabotage, that is.
Kidd is an artist who uses his computer skills to pay the bills that selling paintings won’t cover. He’s also willing to engage in some hacking if the price is right. The wealthy owner of an aviation company approaches Kidd to help him even the score after one of his rival corporations stole a breakthrough piece of technology developed to help sell a new type of jet to the military.
It’s a risky operation that has to be done on a deadline, but the paycheck is a small fortune so Kidd takes the gig. He also recruits some allies to help. His friend/sometime lover LuEllen is a professional burglar who can help him get into the homes of employees for passwords and other info, and Dace is a disgraced journalist who still has the contacts to start smearing the rival company in the media once they throw several monkey wrenches into the works. If they can pull it off they all walk away rich. If not, they might wind up in jail. Or worse.
John Sandford came up with this series at the same time as his Prey novels, and it originally came out in 1989 under his real name John Camp because they were both being published by two different companies who didn’t want to have the same author competing with himself. The Prey series sold better so many more books followed while the Sandford name became the brand. After two books, Kidd would only appear in the Prey series as an unnamed artist until Sandford finally got the full rights back, and once he was a regular best-seller Kidd and LuEllen would return in two more books as well as popping up in the other series now and then.
It’s surprising that this book holds up as well as it does considering it should have several dated aspects. Kidd, like the early version of Davenport in Prey, seems to be constructed as the prototypical ‘80s action/thriller star. He’s a computer expert who is a Vietnam vet that studies martial arts who also engages in shady business. The artist angle makes him a little eccentric, and there’s the added quirk of his using tarot cards as way of spurring outside the box thinking. However, just as he did with Davenport, Sandford manages to keep Kidd grounded and relatable enough that you feel like you’re reading about a smart person with skills, not some completely unrealistic macho asshole.
The other dated element the book manages to skirt is that although a lot of this based on computer hacking circa 1989, it doesn’t read as being ancient. Unlike many a thriller writer in the ‘90s, Sandford always had a knack for incorporating tech of the day and using it for plot points without having people talk about it with wide-eyed awe. While Kidd has to explain some computer stuff and what he’s doing it always seems kind of matter of fact and keeps it a high enough level that the same concepts still apply today.
Overall, this is just a really solid thriller done by a writer early in his fiction career who would go on to become a master at plotting and building tension and momentum. He’s not quite there yet, and the last third of book doesn’t have the same kind of climax you get in his best work.
I’d probably go 3 stars if I just didn’t like Kidd and LuEllen as characters so damn much. Plus, I really appreciate just how deviously clever the sabotage plan is with Kidd being absolutely diabolical in the changes he makes to the company’s computer system coupled with their media campaign to discredit the company. There’s a reason Prey became the more popular series, but there is still fun reading to be had here for Sandford fans....more
This involves a small group of people running an operation to take down a bunch of corrupt politicians who use extreme gerrymandering and dirty tricksThis involves a small group of people running an operation to take down a bunch of corrupt politicians who use extreme gerrymandering and dirty tricks to stay in power while they steal everything they can and screw over everyone they claim to represent in the process.
I kinda feel we should all be taking notes from this one.
Longstreet is small river city in Mississippi where the local officials are crooked as a dog’s back leg. After an innocent unarmed young black man is mistakenly killed by the police the whole thing is quickly swept under the rug. However, a group of left-wing activists have had enough and want to take over the town by any means necessary.
This brings artist/computer-expert/saboteur Kidd into it by his hacker buddy Bobby who was a friend of the murdered kid. The idea is Kidd will come up with a plan to dismantle the local political machine so the activists can take over the city council. Kidd is sympathetic to the cause, but his real motivation is that corruption means money being involved so there’s a good chance of a big payday. To help with that angle he contacts his friend/professional thief/sometime-lover LuEllen to help find a way to get the dirty officials out of office and steal all they can from them while doing so. However, they’ll have to be very careful because they’re kicking an awfully big hornet’s nest.
One of the primary reasons I really like it is that it’s just such a cool concept. A shady hacker tries to take down a ring of crooked politicians who control a small city? I could read about that all day long. As with the first book, The Fool's Run, the schemes that Kidd comes up with are devilishly clever and seem realistic. As he and LuEllen track down where the locals have stashed their loot so they can rob them, they’re also working on a scam to expose them as well cooking up a way for the activists to take over once the dust settles. Sandford has a knack for writing people planning and executing criminal acts, and these play out as essentially elaborate heist novels.
Another Sandford talent is creating characters that are fun to read about. Kidd and LuEllen are two great examples of this because they’re smart, funny, interesting, talented, and come across as real people instead of the kind of cartoon characters you get in lesser thrillers. They also don’t make excuses or rationalizations about who they are, and they have a clear-eyed pragmatism about being criminals despite sometimes having good intentions. Even though they try their best to avoid violence they’re also starting to question how many people still end up dead when they pull one of these jobs.
It’s also interesting that even though this book was published in 1991 and involves some computer tech that it doesn’t feel dated at all. In fact, even though Sandford has been writing these kinds of books for 30 years and frequently includes technology of the moment, they all age exceptionally well. That's probably because the main plots are rooted in ideas and themes that don’t change, and the tech is just window dressing. This book starts with a trigger happy cop killing an unarmed black kid, and then it rolls into massive political corruption. He obviously could have done that set-up today and just changed a few minor things like subbing wi-fi for dialing into a modem.
The only thing I disliked is that the main thug is the town’s animal control officer, and there’s a pretty nasty stuff in his treatment of dogs and cats to make it clear that he’s a sadistic bastard. Sandford doesn’t engage in misery or torture porn, but he does know how to write a scene that will make your skin crawl. Since I can’t stand to read about animals being abused I could have lived without that, but again, it’s relatively brief, and we don’t have to dwell on the details so it’s fairly easy to skim over and get the essence of that character....more
Remember the good old days when media revelations about illegal or unethical behavior by politicians would cause a scandal that could remove them fromRemember the good old days when media revelations about illegal or unethical behavior by politicians would cause a scandal that could remove them from office? Me neither at this point, but that’s when this book is set. Way back during the mid-00s when the internet was still growing, but social media hadn’t yet turned the world into a screaming hellscape devoid of decency and hope. (Sorry. It’s been a long couple of years.)
Anyhow…. Professional artist/hacker/saboteur Kidd has gone mostly legit with his paintings selling well, and he is even doing a favor for a politician that involves playing slot machines as part of a statistical investigation into potential casino skimming. His occasional snuggle bunny, the professional thief LuEllen, is helping out with this when they get word that Kidd’s infamous hacker buddy Bobby has gone offline in such a way that it’s raised an alarm, and Kidd is geographically close enough to help check on him.
What Kidd finds is Bobby murdered, and his laptop filled with hacked data is missing. Then someone claiming to be Bobby starts feeding bombshells to the media about government secrets as well as political corruption. With scandal after scandal setting cable news ablaze, Kidd and his friends are sweating what information about them might be in Bobby’s files and who has them. They have to perform a delicate balancing act of trying to get Bobby’s murder investigated without tipping off the feds to his true identity as a wanted hacker until they can get the laptop and make sure they won’t get burned in the process.
Like the other Kidd & LuEllen novels this one involves a lot of hacking, breaking & entering, a fair amount of detective work, and some fairly devious scheming. All four of the novels are at a comparable level of enjoyment and quality, and the only real knock I can put on this one is that it’s just a little too close to the previous book in which Kidd also got pulled into a bad situation when a hacker friend gets killed.
It’s interesting to note that while the series ran from the late-80s until 2003 and always had a lot about computer tech that they never feel horribly dated in the way that many of ‘90s net-crazy books did. The hacking is also portrayed with a sense of practical authenticity that feels believable, unlike the near magic that computer hacking is regularly shown to be like in most fiction anymore.
However, this last one feels the most dated in some ways. Like there’s a scene in which Kidd cobbles together a WiFi antenna from parts bought a Radio Shack, and then explains what WiFi is and how it’s becoming very popular. (Although he also wryly notes that it might be obsolete tomorrow.) That all seems very quaint now, but maybe the thing that seems really old fashioned is the idea that a political scandal revealed in the media might actually get that person removed from office at the very least. Since a lot of the plot hinges on that concept it seems hilariously out of touch these days.
Still, those are minor gripes, and as always Sandford is a master of plotting to build tension and momentum. Like a good heist movie there is a lot of planning and cleverness to the things that Kidd and Lu-Ellen need to pull off, and that’s probably the aspect I enjoy most. This also has one of my favorite sequences in the series when LuEllen gets into trouble, and Kidd quickly goes to extreme lengths in an effort to pull her out of the soup. The growing closeness of the relationship between two professional criminals who are so paranoid that Kidd doesn’t even know her real name is another interesting aspect of the series.
Like a lot of fans, I wish that Sandford had done more of these. Unfortunately, the FAQ on his official website states that he probably won’t simply because they don’t sell well enough compared to his other series although he doesn’t completely rule it out. And we do get to see more of Kidd & LuEllen now and then in the Prey novels, including a big subplot in Silken Prey that seems almost like a final curtain call for them. Still, with the way this one wraps up it seems like a shame we never got more because it opened the door to a lot of interesting possibilities....more
Kidd returns home from a fishing trip and immediately gets bad news. One of his hacking buddies was recently killed in Dallas while supposedly breakinKidd returns home from a fishing trip and immediately gets bad news. One of his hacking buddies was recently killed in Dallas while supposedly breaking into a software company that does a lot of cybersecurity work for the U.S. government. At the same time feds start a massive crackdown looking for a group of hackers going by the name of Firewall, and Kidd’s name is on the list along with several other friends of his even though they aren’t part of any organized group.
Fearing that they’re being set up to take the fall for some kind of shenanigans, Kidd recruits professional burglar LuEllen to help figure out how his dead friend is connected to Firewall through their usual methods of hacking and breaking into places to get information. As the pressure increases Kidd finds himself living like a fugitive as he tries to find a way to get the government to lay off the hackers.
This is another solid story featuring Kidd and LuEllen from Sandford, and they continue to be the kind of criminals that you really hope get away with it. There’s the usual clever scams and schemes, and Sandford makes what is essentially a conspiracy thriller plot still seem grounded and realistic. Most of all, it’s just fun to read.
This was published in 2000, and while Sandford usually does a great job of writing the tech stuff so that it doesn’t seem dated, but there’s a few aspects that haven’t aged well. There’s a plot point about how the NSA is concerned that increasingly sophisticated computer encryption is preventing them from tapping into communications so this was obviously written before the Patriot Act gave them the green light to spy on everybody. But that’s a minor complaint. ...more
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