Right as Rain (Windsor Selection S.) - Hardcover

It was late at night and everyone was shouting, when off-duty black cop Chris Wilson was shot dead by his colleague Terry Quinn; middle-aged black private eye and ex-cop Strange is hired by Wilson's mother to find out exactly what happened--Wilson ended up being blamed for his own death and she wants her son's name cleared. Strange finds himself taking to Quinn, a bright young man with anger-management issues; Quinn himself is anxious to find out what caused the misunderstanding and shooting that ended Wilson's life and Quinn's career. Right as Rain is an intelligent thriller because it offers no especially easy answers--Quinn is so little a racist that he falls easily into a friendship with Strange, enough of a friendship that he will from time to time make crass assumptions. And meanwhile Pelecanos lets us see enough of the drug-dealing underground of Washington DC and the near-terminal decline of Wilson's junkie sister Sondra that we know there are revelations to come. Pelecanos is good on male friendship and the things that keep people sane--Strange is a richly imagined smart cautious man who puts himself in serious danger for what is right. -- Roz Kaveney

'The coolest writer in America' (GQ) begins a new crime series in his most accessible and commercial novel yet.