Starred Review. For Washington, DC, cop Gus Malone, the murder of teenager Asa Johnson isn't just another case. For one thing, Asa was a friend of Gus's son, so the death has a personal impact on his family. Secondly, the details of the case are startlingly similar to those of several still-unsolved serial killings that took place 20 years earlier, when Gus was a young officer. Complicating matters is that Asa's body was discovered by Gus's former partner, Dan Holiday, who left the department under a cloud. Soon, Holiday and T.C. Cook, the legendary, now-retired lead detective who investigated the original murders, integrate themselves into Gus's case. Pelecanos (Soul Circus) creates another fascinating, completely believable hero whose supporting cast members all have their own great stories. As in his previous novels, as well as his work on HBO's The Wire, he manages to weave several threads perfectly into the larger story. Another winner from arguably our best contemporary crime writer, this is a necessary purchase for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/06.]-- Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Oxford, OH

As he did in Drama City (2005), Pelecanos again rests his series characters but keeps the action firmly grounded on the inner-city streets of Washington, D.C. This time he focuses on three cops--one retired, the legendary detective T. C. Cook; another, Dan (Doc ) Holiday, forced to quit under a morals cloud; and a third, Gus Ramone, soldiering on in the dogged effort to be good police. The three worked together 15 years earlier on a still-unsolved case involving a series of murdered teenagers. Now, with another teenager murdered--his body found, as were those of the previous victims, in one of the city's community gardens--the old case has resurfaced, and the three cops find themselves thrown together, each hoping to excise their very different personal demons. The more Pelecanos writes, the more he extends his range, circling outward from the central crime story to encompass more of the sociopolitical landscape yet simultaneously drawing inward to reflect on how that landscape affects the inner lives of his characters. In the past, though, he has focused mainly on civilians--good, bad, and various shades in between--but here, for the first time since Hard Revolution (2004), he looks closely at police. The result isn't just a procedural--though it is that, and a very good one--but also a form of explorative surgery, in which he lays open the hearts of three cops and observes how those organs beat. One thinks of Michael Connelly, John Harvey, and Ian Rankin--other writers able to look inside their cop heroes with remarkable sensitivity--but Pelecanos' scalpel may cut more precisely than any of them. --Bill Ott Copyright 2006 Booklist

With a soft, unemotional delivery worthy of the late Jack Webb, Pelecanos puts a cool, effectively dramatic vocal sheen on a novel that is arguably among his best. The initially straightforward police procedural quickly evolves into an emotionally complex tale of three Washington, D.C., cops who in 1985 were on the trail of a serial killer known as the Night Gardener. The killer stopped before he was caught. Twenty years later, that lack of closure has its effect on the trio. Gus Ramone, now a member of the department's Violent Crime Branch, is assigned a murder case that suggests the Gardener has returned. His former rookie partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, booted from the force for impropriety, finds key information about the killing and takes it to T.C. Cook, the original detective on the case, who, in spite of retirement and a recent stroke, continues to hope the Gardener can be harvested. Using subtle changes in pitch and pace, Pelecanos suggests Ramone's low-key intensity, Holiday's edgy resentment and Cook's weary but dogged dedication as the three men move toward a conclusion that is strikingly original and far from the predictably neat wrapup of less ambitious works. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, June 19). (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

You can take Pelecanos out of his two DC series starring Nick Stefanos (Shame the Devil, 2000, etc.) and Derek Strange (Hard Revolution, 2004, etc.), but you can't take the impulse to turn District crime into a serial epic out of Pelecanos. Twenty years ago, Officers Gus Ramone and Dan Holiday were brought together by the murder of Eve Drake, 14, whose palindromic first name marked her as the third victim of a sex killer dubbed The Night Gardener, who's already snuffed out Otto Williams and Ava Simmons. Despite the best efforts of Sgt. T.C. Cook, the formidable lead detective, the case was never closed. The passing years turned Ramone from a time-server to a solid cop who forced Holiday off the Metro Police during an Internal Affairs investigation. Now the shooting of Asa Johnson, a friend of Ramone's son Diego, galvanizes both men once more. Ramone wonders if The Night Gardener has returned--and why he might have been inactive for all those years. Holiday, though he's been off the job for years, calls on long-retired Cook, who tells him of a suspect he could never quite bring to book, a suspect who's recently been released from prison after serving 19-plus years. But the real attraction here, as usual with Pelecanos (Drama City, 2005, etc.), is the tangle of untamed subplots: the ex-dealer who's sworn to keep his cousin on the straight and narrow, the man who stabs his estranged wife, the dead housepainter who obviously had a more lucrative sideline, the daily struggles of Diego Ramone to earn respect in the suburban high school his parents have sneaked him into. The setup screams Mystic River, but Pelecanos's olympian yet furiously impassioned take on urban violence remains his own. The best American comparison, in fact, is James Lee Burke, who also keeps writing the same churning book over and over and clearly hates to come to the last page just as much as Pelecanos. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A serial killer seems to have returned to the District of Columbia after a 20-year hiatus. Two ex-cops, who worked the case back in the day, still obsess over it and carry on an investigation parallel to the police's. The case hits especially close to home for Detective Gus Ramone, as his adolescent son knew the victim. Gus has his own issues, balancing work and family, keeping his son on the straight and narrow in a society that thwarts him at every opportunity. Pelecanos continues his winning streak in a tough novel that's more a whodunit than he usually attempts, though it features his trademark music references and strong sense of place. If the occasional subplot seems designed solely to ramp up the violence, his listeners are used to that and won't mind. Richard M. Davidson delivers a reading so macho as to border on parody; he absolutely snarls Chapter 28. A stong candidate for any library collection.-John Hiett, Iowa City P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.