Right As Rain: A Derek Strange Novel (Derek Strange and Terry Quinn Series, 1)

Its a great story with unique and colorful characters but it's a little heavy handed and really never lets up. Take a break sometime with the race card and let them carry a different torch for a while.

Feels familiar!

I love Derek and Terry, and devoured this book just as quickly as the 1st in this series.

very good, not great . standard Pelecanos.

George Pelecanos wrote, edited, and co-produced HBO's acclaimed "The Wire," so going in you know he's got the mean streets, the three-dimensional characters, and the deep shadows of the noir-genre in his blood. (Not for nothing was he picked to edit the collection "D.C. Noir".) And with those bloodlines, Pelecanos paints a brilliant portrait of crime life in the under-belly of the District of Columbia, the territory of ex-cop and P.I. Derek Strange.
"Right as Rain," the first several Derek Strange novels, weaves four different threads into violent convergence: middle-aged Strange trading style and flash for wits and wisdom, becoming the mature and stable man he wants to be despite his "player" past, hired to re-investigate the death of a black cop; a white ex-cop, Terry Quinn, who shot the black cop and joins Strange's investigation (and rejoins Strange in several more books); the black cop's beautiful estranged sister on a drug-dependent spiral down to the gutter and below; and two trailer-trash redneck drug-dealers who rip off their Florida source to deal direct with a D.C. drug kingpin. What winds up in the papers has nothing to do with what went down. Just as well, these are great stories, but not pretty pictures.
Pelecanos writes beautifully, and we see the characters, hear the voices, feel the potholes, and even smell the blood as the action threads flow together. We watch rather than read a great story unfold against the grittier parts of the District of Columbia. Pelecanos has been called the Zola of D.C. crime fiction, and under the visual action, Pelecanos tells the believable back-story of white cop shooting black cop that fits perfectly into the Trayvon Martin -- George Zimmerman racism national zeitgeist. More subtle than Zola, Pelecanos writes with all the conviction of J'accuse. Published in 2001, "Right as Rain" has a 2013 feel for the tragic essence of white-on-black violence.
"The Wire" is some of the finest television of our time, Pelecanos is among our finest writers, his novels some of the most rewarding you will read.

I not only enjoyed the book, but the references to music and cars took me back to my favorite days of being a young policeman. I have read more of the Derek Strange novels and have enjoyed them. I recommend Pelecanos writings.