'Perhaps the greatest living American crime writer' Stephen King
After the Carusos family home is destroyed by police with a no-knock warrant, the family struggle to return to normal.
Two former inmates reunite on a TV set. They're both back on the straight and narrow ... until one sees the potential for an easy grift.
A teenage boy must step into the man he'd like to be as a hostage crisis grips his hometown.
A woman adrift meets a man tied to her grandmother's past, and awakens to the bloody history of the place she grew up.
Pelecanos' portraits are characterized by shades of grey, resisting the mold of heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators, good and evil. At once streetwise and full of heart, Owning Up grapples with random chance, the bind of consequence, and the forked paths a life can take.
****
Praise for George Pelecanos:
'Triple-distilled excellence. Pelecanos is the undisputed poet laureate of America's most secret city. Not just recommended: this is essential reading.' LEE CHILD
'Every time I read one of George Pelecanos's novels I'm left a little awed and a little envious. The guy's a national treasure.' DENNIS LEHANE
'Pelecanos is a powerful writer - he deserves to be listed among the best.' OBSERVER
'Gold-standard character-driven crime writing that few will ever match.' FT
'George Pelecanos writes hard-boiled fiction with heart.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
George Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman's shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992.
Pelecanos is the author of twenty books set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, The Turnaround, The Way Home, The Cut, What It Was, The Double, and The Martini Shot. He has been the recipient of the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir in France. Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The Turnaround won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in the field of crime writing. His fiction has appeared in Playboy, Esquire, and the collections Unusual Suspects, Best American Mystery Stories of 1997, Measures of Poison, Best American Mystery Stories of 2002, Men From Boys, and Murder at the Foul Line. He served as editor on the collections D.C. Noir and D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, as well as The Best Mystery Stories of 2008. He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, GQ, Sight and Sound, Uncut, Mojo, and numerous other publications. Esquire magazine called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world." In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." Pelecanos would like to point out that Mr. King used the word "perhaps."
Pelecanos was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award, the AFI Award, and the Edgar. He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show. He was a writer and co-producer on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, produced by Steven Spielberg, and most recently worked as a writer and Executive Producer on the HBO series Treme.
Pelecanos lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is at work on his next novel.
