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Web-Exclusive Book Review
The Night Gardener
By George Pelecanos (Little, Brown & Company, August 2006)
Review by John F. Baker, July 2006
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George Pelecanos is a triple-threat man as movie producer, screenwriter (of the extraordinary HBO series The Wire), and, of course, novelist. He is the author of a remarkable series of novels about police and criminals in his native Washington, D.C., that transcend any conventional genre. They are at once thrillers, suspense novels, mysteries, police procedurals, and closely observed studies of how a huge range of contemporary people think, act, and talk. Even if you've never met any of the people in a Pelecanos book, his account of their dreams and desires, and the words with which they express themselves, convince you utterly that they exist and that the author was merely observing and overhearing them.
His latest offers a large cast of such rich characters, especially Gus Ramone, a devoted family man married to a black woman, and a cop who has always played by the rules; Dan "Doc" Holiday, who once bent them and had to leave the force, to his eternal regret; and T.C. Cook, a black detective who at the height of his career, in the mid-1980s, had the highest crime-solving rate in the city. All three were involved to some extent in trying to solve a series of sex murders of teenagers back then. Now, 20 years later, with Cook proudly retired but still obsessing over the old, still-open case, Holiday making a sad living as a livery driver and drinking and womanizing too much, and only Gus still on the force, it seems that a killer with a similar M.O. has struck again. So the three get reacquainted, slowly and suspiciously at first, to see what they can do to bring the ancient case to some kind of closure. The way Pelecanos spins out his story is full of surprises, some of them agonizing, and he offers a wonderfully open-ended but subtle and deeply satisfying conclusion. There are also several thoroughly involving subplots, featuring a befuddled wife-killer who seems only too anxious to confess, a crooked cop whose actions lead to a minor massacre, and a cocky young crook determined to make his name as a criminal legend or die trying.
But this is not basically a plot-driven book. It's about how time changes you and how a certain pride in what you do can continue to give meaning to your life into old age and infirmity—and also about how people not born to money and power manage to struggle toward the light despite the many obstacles life in today's America throws in their way. An ultimately hopeful book, it's also a breathlessly readable one.
John F. Baker is a former editor of Publishers Weekly and a longtime reviewer.
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