thriller

While I'd love to say this was unique and worthy of recommendation, I cannot. It's your basic criminal gets out of jail to make good story. The only redeeming factor is he learns to value reading, something most felons never arrive at. Evenly paced, the characters are underwhelming as is the story. ( )

Pelecanos always creates a sense of place and people that is seductive and it is very true for this book. I really love the fact that one of the central themes is the power of discovering the wonder of reading! Deep inside of me is the joy I felt as a kid when finding and reading new books. It was AMAZING. Here we have someone as a character who had few of the advantages I did. He did something "wrong." But because someone cares enough to be the librarian in the prison he is able to change and grow. I was obviously a sucker for this story. It helps that I understand the setting since, as always, Pelecanos writes in the real city of DC, not the tourist areas or political power locations that most thrillers visit. I won't give away any of the story because that is something you just should not do. I will say though that the final two lines of the book brought a tear to my eye. That's what happens when a author makes you care. ( )

DNF.

Pelecanos is a literary crime writer who emphasizes character development and the creation of fully realized physical and social milieus. His work reminds me of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brody series. However, compelling characters and settings are not sufficient by themselves. The author must give the characters something to do. Pelecanos achieved an adequate balance in “The Cut,” but he was not so successful in this offering.

Some characters Pelecanos introduced in the early chapters seemed promising, and they reminded of Elmore Leonard. However, Leonard typically introduced an interesting plot at the outset. His quirky characters engage in interesting activities, and the plot advances at an acceptable pace. Unfortunately, the dust cover of “The Man Who Came Uptown” provided my only clue to the plot. As with Atkinson’s Jackson Brody sequence, I gave up.

The next time I am in the mood for crime fiction, I think I’ll pull one of my Elmore Leonard novels off the shelf. ( )

I love Pelecanos standalones and this tops The Way Home... like bingeing a series in one sitting, it is rich and layered and deep with character, and I'll want to read it again like the many books he references. ( )