Synopses & Reviews
Derek Strange is a rookie cop, the job he's dreamed of since he was a boy. His brother, Dennis, has not been as fortunate; home from the service with a disability pension and zero prospects, he is man with good intentions but bad habits. Derek has always looked out for Dennis, but no amount of brotherly love can save him from the dangerous world of Alvin Jones, a local bottom-feeder, hustler, and stone killer who draws him into his web of violence.
While the rookie cop navigates the rocky terrain of a city in turmoil, a family in crisis, and his love for a woman he has driven away, Frank Vaughn, a cop at the opposite end of his career, investigates the vicious hit and run of a young black man. Vaughn's personal life is a shambles, but he's good police; he pursues the killers with sharklike intent. Meanwhile, in Memphis, a prophet is murdered, igniting a volcanic chain of events that will leave the nation's capital burned, divided, and decimated, forever changing the lives of its working-class inhabitants.
Review
"Written in rich, observant prose, the novel is a brilliant study of a society tearing apart as racial tensions escalate after the King killing; no wonder some observers have pointed to Pelecanos as the kind of thriller writer who should be nominated for a National Book Award." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Pelecanos has been justly celebrated for his noir sensibility and his gritty portraits of the streets of Washington, D.C., but he hasn't been recognized for what may be his greatest achievement: redefining the art of writing serial fiction." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"[A] superior crime novel from one of the genre's outstanding writers." Library Journal
Review
"The most conventionally ambitious of Pelecanos's sprawling studies of D.C. crime: pat in its sociological determinism, harrowing in its portraits of each hopeless loser and the few ex-losers who escape." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[Pelecanos] has an ability to fascinate the strictest law-abiding reader with
detailed and authentic-feeling glimpses into the machinery of crime....Hard Revolution marks a further step in the evolution of Strange's character, and of Pelecanos's art." Anthony Walton, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
In this epic showdown from "one of the best crime novelists alive" (Dennis Lehane), police officer Derek Strange hunts his brother's killer through a city erupting with rage.
About the Author
George Pelecanos has worked as an electronics salesman, shoe salesman, bartender, construction worker, and independent film producer. He is the author of ten novels set in and around Washington, D.C. His novel King Suckerman was a finalist for the Golden Dagger Award and is being produced as a movie by Sean Combs, and his most recent novel, The Sweet Forever, was named a Notable Book of 1998 by Publishers Weekly.