The time is 1976. Captain Beefheart's on the eight-track.
The hot new superfly flick King Suckerman is coming to
neighborhood theaters. And Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of
drugs and racial tension—an easy place to turn a wrong
corner and land in a whole lot of trouble.
That's what happens to Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras when
they cross paths with an ex-con and his gang of natural born
killers. Walking into a drug deal gone south, Clay and
Karras end up with a pile of money that isn't theirs...the
sexy teenage girlfriend of the Italian dealer...and major
trouble. The ex-con is soon spilling blood to get to the
cash. The dealer is scheming to get his girl back. And two
knockaround guys named Clay and Karras are reaching a
pivotal moment—the time to take a stand, go straight, and
get justice. Or maybe just sweet revenge.
In this sizzling thriller, George Pelecanos writes with a
firecracker in his prose, shooting sparks on every page and
earning his place among the stars of crime fiction.