There are two Pelecanos series(he must write fast like Deb) One that starts with "The Big Blowdown" and one that starts with "Right as Rain" He's like Lehane but a tiny bit more optimistic, just enough so I don't finish the books and hope to die young. ;)You know? And we share a musical obsession with the soul of the seventies. (/my literary boyfriend likes carrots. Opa!) Oops...not quite done. If anyone here cares about the future of the crime novel, read "Hard Revolution"...sorry to use the "t-word" Susan, but it really did "transcend".

Although (and this is totally the wrong thread!) a fair amount of Pelecanos isn't mysteries -- they're crime fiction. There's no real whodunit.

Oh, lordy, the genre definition discussion. That's one I'm staying all the way out of.

Jesse is right...a lot of times we do know the "who" and "how"...it's mostly seeing if the Mostly Good guys can stay ahead of the Mostly Bad guys.(because both sides usually have somebody who could fit in with the other crowd.) Look out for bad tippers and people that don't respect good music when they hear it...bad stuff happens to them. And Deb, you know I'm not doing that... not with an urban, noirish, feminist, "defective detective" novel with class issues and procedural overtones.

Heh. It's just a discussion I back out of the room for, these days, that classification thing. Not my deal.

I don't like that either...mostly because I suck at it. But I will say that GP can remind me style-wise of Lehane, but story-wise more like Elmore Leonard(who mostly doesn't whodunit either) "A Firing Offense" was, and should also be read by everyone who ever worked a crap retail job.

"A Firing Offense" was, and should also be read by everyone who ever worked a crap retail job.

Takes notes.

Part of what I liked about that book was the overwhelming tone of "When this is published, I'm so out of here!" that pervaded it. But I may be projecting... I do that, sometimes, being as how a good paragraph can be an occasion of sin sometimes and give me wicked crushes. And this really is "Pelecanos likes carrots." now. I should shut up.

Definitely liking the drabbles that this topic prompted. When I first saw it I kinda said, "huh." And then I wrote two. Huh.

ETA: Susan, good job! I hit post before I remembered to say that. Oops.

Which is the better story? My retired detective and his disabled operative find out that their partner/father did not really commit suicide. but was murdered for some reason I'll have to determine.

Or He did, but they find out something pivotal about some last case that might have been nagging at him at the time of his death?