This is the fourth book in the DC Quartet by George Pelecanos. This limited first edition of Shame the Devil was published in November 1999 by Dennis McMillan Publications in Tucson, dust jacket and interior artwork by Joe Servello. This is a printer specializing in limited first editions. I got this fancy book online from Royal Books in Baltimore. I guess maybe it is supposed to have a slipcase. Instead it “only” has a plastic covered dust jacket. Maybe it’s a knockoff! Anyway, it’s just a book to me but I don’t suppose I will use it as a coaster for a drink. Anyone got a clue what this could be all about and how I got it for $7.99 including shipping?If you read Pelecanos with any regularity, you might think you have been to the Spot bar and grill some other time. Maybe you have or someplace a lot like it. Nick Stefanos is in his place behind the bar but drinking right along with the regulars. Homicide detective Dan Boyle stops by for his afternoon Jack Daniel’s and Bud and to talk about his 13 year old daughter. You will hear a lot about the staff and the operation of the Spot. I’m not sure what it must be like today with all the no smoking regulations. You can be sure they weren’t in effect in 1998, the time we’re in. You will hear about President Clinton and his little intern problem, that’s for sure. And you will hear about DC local government and all its low points.We meet Alicia, the current girlfriend of Nick. Don’t count on finding out too much about her other than how she looks and fucks. That’s the usual limit of character development of women for Pelecanos. (Maybe I am getting tired of that fact about Pelecanos. Maybe his upcoming 2011 book The Cut due out in August will be different. Think? And maybe they won’t be smoking in the bars…) Nick rarely has to order when he goes into a bar; people know what he drinks at most of the places he frequents.So, when Dimitri Karras and Anna Wang meet on page 124, do we think they are going to get it on? Yes, we do. (Q&A: Did Dimitri and Anna get it on? I guess you’ll just have to read the book and find out. (And, yes, Dimitri is Pete Karras’ son. Pete from an earlier Pelecanos book.)There is a consummate bad guy in this book: Frank Farrow. Now, I don’t remember all the Pelecanos bad guys to know if Frank is the worst, but he has got to be close. He is the devil in the title, after all, isn’t he? Or maybe he just holds the Pelecanos record for the number of people killed by a single individual. You know the computer has made it possible to keep all sorts of obscure records in sports. Probably someday a baseball announcer on national TV will let us know how many of Jeter’s 3000 hits happened with two outs and a man on third. Maybe someone will create an app with Pelecanos factoids and statistics.“Tell the truth,” said James, “ and shame the devil.” How many time does that appear in Shame the Devil? Let me look on my iPad.How the expediter works at the Spot is actually interesting, I think. But hearing the 1998 Washington Wizards players, Strickland, Cheaney, Webber, Murray, gets a smile from me even though I rooted more for the Mystics. Takes the edge off all the bullets in the head by Frank Farrow. Ok, so before you all offer me big bucks for this limited first edition, I have done some internet sleuthing There is evidently a specialty market for these books at premium prices. I saw $50 to $1450. This is books for people with too much money! I don’t think I will be adding to my collection of one. I remember buying a limited edition serigraph 40 years ago. It’s still on my ex-wife’s living room wall. The idea was that it would increase in value. Yah, if you can find anyone who wants “Bear in the Birches”! (No offense to anyone out there who buys limited edition books or prints.)The stars? I may be real close to having read too many Pelecanos books in too short a time. I think I could get tired of him. Reading his annual book and then laying off for a year might be just about right for me. But I was still hooked on Shame the Devil and kept turning the pages so it gets four stars. So what does one do with a complete set of hardcover Pelecanos?
I want to like George Pelecanos. First because I like to keep a few 'genre' people in my reading habits. By doing this I feel a little less like a total snob when it comes to reading, but more importantly because sometimes I do like to pick up a book and know that I'm going to be reading a plot driven story, or a book where something happens and not a whole lot of effort is needed to get to that something happening. But even though I like having a few of these books in my reading list, I want to cheat and make sure that they are on the more 'literary' end of the spectrum. I'm not sure why, but I think of Pelecanos being more on that end, than say Michael Connolly. That said, I don't really know the first thing about MC though. Second, he wrote for The Wire, which was just about the most 'literary' show ever on American TV. I don't mean that they dropped book references left and right (with that as a criteria Lost would probably win out, with it's Dostoevsky, Flann O'Brien et al., references), but rather the whole structure and development of characters and all that shit. Third, he has a cool sounding name, if I'm going to read a crime novelist I'd like for his name to sound like it came out of a James Ellroy novel. Now, what about the book? It's disappointing. Not for the reasons I noticed some other reviewers on goodreads.com said. To me the writing and the story were just fine, and the 'color' of information about how a kitchen runs was just fine too, it's actually nice in a book to get some details like that to make the book feel real, or alive. My problem with the book is that it just seemed to set itself up for something more ambitious than it really was. The basic story is a revenge theme. The back of the book just about gives away the entire plot line, so there were no real surprises coming, but to get to the revenge part of the book Pelecanos stuffs the book with tons of characters. There are lots and lots of them, and sadly except for being introduced and maybe given a few mentions later most of them never seem to serve much purpose. Most of them seem like possibly interesting characters too. So much page space in say the second quarter of the book goes towards introducing all of these characters and filling out the story that the main characters don't seem to get developed as they should. As a result the background characters all seem to have this possibly cool shit going on, but the few main characters are stuck feeling like stock characters. Solution? The novel should have been developed more, I don't think he should have cut out the plethora of background characters, just used them more to flesh out the story than just to give color to the story, at the same time the main characters could be developed too, after reading Pelecanos' newest novel I know that he has character development in his bag of writer tricks, so it was a little disappointing to see him fail to use this tool here.That was my general gripe with the book. A specific gripe was the unbelievability that anyone in any state of intoxication who grew up surrounded by the Washington DC hardcore scene would believe that Nation of Ulysses 13 Point Plan to Destroy America is the greatest punk record of all time. That was just too unbelievable for me, NOU is a fine band but their albums aren't the finest work of say Minor Threat, Fugazi, Bad Brains, Void, or Faith to name just a few bands that produced much more superior albums and that also hailed from our nations capitol. That said though, it is neat to see all kinds of Dischord bands getting name dropped in Pelecanos' books (or at least in the two that I've read so far).
What do You think about Shame The Devil (2015)?
"Shame the Devil," by George Pelecanos, opens with a jolt of shocking, brutal violence, and then settles into the mundane day-to-day life of Washington D.C. and grief. Pelecanos' prose is like that--he writes with a realism that doesn't spare you punches to the face.The novel begins with a deadly robbery of a pizza parlor in Northwest D.C., which leaves five people dead. The murderers successfully escape the city--one heads to L.A., the other lays low in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Three years later, the family members of the dead are settling back into their lives--or at least trying to--when a series of events will dredge up the past.Central to all of this is Nick Stefanos, a private investigator and a regular in Pelecanos' fiction. Stefanos doesn't have the usual pedigree of a crime fiction private dick--he isn't an ex-cop or an ex-district attorney, but an ex-marketing executive who fell into investigating after his career in electronics tanked. An alcoholic with only one client--seriously, is there ever a detective in these novels who is sober?--he's more passionate about cars and music than truth or justice. He stumbles into this story almost accidentally.D.C. has a reputation as a hollow, superficial city filled with yuppie transplants, but Pelecanos captures another side of the city. His D.C. is a city of working people and immigrants, with a history as rich as Boston or Chicago. In this novel, much of the action also takes place in the areas of Maryland where I've spent a lot of time--Prince George's County, Silver Spring, Wheaton, Upper Marlboro, the Chesapeake, and the Eastern Shore. He's able to tie in a wide cast of characters, some only tangentially related to the central plot, but all important to the story.I noted that "The Night Gardener," a more recent Pelecanos book, was so similar to "The Wire" that it almost read like a rejected script. This book, which was written years before "The Wire" premiered, is more basic. Aside from a few thoughts about how Congress has screwed over the District, there aren't many grand statements about American crime. It's a raw crime story about flawed good people and truly evil people. It's thrilling, but not in a cheap way---despite the violence and sex, it's ultimately a character and dialogue-driven drama. Highly recommended.NOTE: Those summaries they put on the backs of books are kind of like movie trailers--they can give away half of the plot. I remember when I was a kid how angry I was when the summary of a Young Indiana Jones novel gave away a plot twist in the final chapter. If you can somehow manage, try not to read the back. It's not a big deal, but it somewhat spoils the surprise of how elegantly the many different plot strands ultimately come together.
—Alex
Originally reviewed as part of a 5 book round up.Continuing the Devil theme next up is Shame The Devil by George Pelecanos and is pretty much a typically great George pelecanos book with several of his regular haunts and caracters and of course murder revenge and great music. His devils are not as sick and twisted as Derek raymonds devil but then Washington isn't Rotherhithe is it, still I didn't have it fully worked out till right at the end which is how its meant to be. Oh and great music as always!!
—Simon
The final novel in the historical DC Quartet finally brings the reader into the then-present day of the 90s, drawing together threads from the previous three books as well as from Pelecanos's Nick Stefanos series. Although I respect the number of elements that Pelecanos keeps in the air, in the end, trying to tie it all together leads the plot to be a bit slower and less thrilling than his previous books. PI Nick Stefanos, formerly just a cameo player in the series, takes a lead role here. Stefanos is a likable protagonist, but his prominence comes as a bit of a surprise. Whereas earlier titles followed a group of friends, mainly 70s burnout Dmitri Karras, thrown into threatening circumstances almost by chance, Stefanos's main storyline is propelled by his private eye profession. He plays a smaller role in the main plot, where a bunch of vicious killers have returned to town to settle scores. This dividing of Pelecanos's narrative saps the main thread of some strength. Whereas his climaxes usually rivet the readers to their seats, here it feels a bit perfunctory. Pelecanos is more interested in the fates of Karras and Stefanos, using this novel to put them in a better place than the emotionally scarred state they start the book in. While this redemption isn't unearned, it detracts from the usual energy of the plot.That said, the book is never anything less than utterly readable. It's just a bit less of a page turner than some of his other books.
—Paul
