Book Review

By Derryll White

Pelecanos, George P. (2002).  Hell To Pay.

George Pelecanos conveys a very clear feeling of the other Washington, D.C.  The White House, political wealth and pretty people are far from the crumbling streets and dirty dark alleys Derek Strange cruises.

Pelecanos builds complexity into his characters.  They all have sub-texts – anger, daddy issues, debilitating stress brought on by coping with an oppressive urban environment.  He brings them alive and the reader walks with them down very mean streets.  He is clear that poverty is the issue facing America.

There’s a certain anger that Pelecanos pulls out of the Washington scene. Part of it is the general malaise the U.S. cultivates when considering the poor and underprivileged, and part of it is a frustrated anger at what the politicians – blocks away – deny.  The author makes his own outrage at the lack of gun control in America clear and present.

‘Hell To Pay’ is a very good, tight story and a strong sociological indictment of all that is wrong in America.  Derek Strange is a private investigator who brings out the best in those around him, but often fails himself.  Pelecanos links racism directly to poverty.  He looks hard at the Washington ghettos, at the conditions that set kids up for failure.  Yet, through his main character, Derek Strange, the author sets out hope, and a path away from the abyss.  The Pee Wee football scenes are heartbreaking.  This is a powerful, moving novel.

********

FORGOTTEN – “But this here tavern was a known hangout for prostis, wasn’t it?”

“More like a safe haven,” said Bagley.  “Nobody bothered them in here.  It was a place to have a beer and a smoke. A moment of quiet.”

“No more, huh?”

Bagley shrugged.  “There’s been an initiative to get the girls out of public establishments.”

Tracy moved her mug in a small circle on the table.  “The powers that be would rather have them shivering in some doorway in December than warm in a place like this.”

RESPECT – “But I do want to tell you that he is off the team.  And the reason he is off is, he broke the deal he made with his coaches, and with you, his teammates to act in a certain way.  The way you got to conduct yourselves if you are going to be a Panther.  And I don’t mean just here on the field.  I’m talking about how you act at home, and in school.  Because we are out here devoting out time to you for no kind of pay, and you and your teammates are working hard,  sweating, to make this the best team we can be.  And we will not tolerate that kind of disrespect, to us or to you.  Do you understand?”

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – The landscape changed from ghost town-downtown to living urban night as soon as they drove onto the north side of the circle.  Small storefronts, occupying the first floors of structures built originally as residential row houses, low-rised the strip.  The commercial picture was changing, new theater venues, cafes and bars cropping up with regularity.  In fact, it had been “changing” for many years.  White gentrifiers tried to close down the family-run markets, utilizing obscure laws like the one forbidding beer and wine sales within a certain proximity to churches.  The crusading gentrifiers cited the loiterers on sidewalks, the kinds of unsavory clientele those types of businesses attracted.  What they really wanted was for their underclass dark-skinned neighbors to go away.

BOOKSTORES – Quinn figured this guy had a wife, kids, a good job.  You’d pass him on the street and think he was your average square.  But one thing you learned working here was that just about everyone had something worthwhile to say if you took the time to listen.  Everyone was more interesting when you got to know them a little than they initially appeared to be.  That was the other thing he liked about working in a place like this.  The conversations you get into and the people you met.

POVERTY – “Poverty is violence, Mr. Strange, you’ve heard that, right?”

“I have.”

“And it begets violence.  Poor black kids see the same television commercials white boys and girls see out in the suburbs.  They’re showed, all their young lives, all the things they should be striving to acquire.  But how they gonna get these things, huh?”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Suburban liberals plastered Free Tibet stickers on the bumpers of their cars, seemingly unconcerned that just a few short miles from the White House, American children were enslaved in nightmare neighborhoods, living amid gunfire and drugs and attending dilapidated public schools.  The nation was outraged at high school shootings in white neighborhoods , but young black men and women were murdered without fanfare in the nation’s capital every single day.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

Article Share