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The Roads Have Come To An End Now: Selected & Last Poems by Rolf Jacobsen. Port Townsend. 2001. Copper Canyon Press. Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly, Roger Greenwald, & Robert Hedin. 171 pages. Cover art by Art Hansen - 'Vashon Farm' (2000). 1556591659. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - An early champion of modernism, Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen 1907-5994) published a body of work that earned him international recognition and established him as one of Europe's great poets. His work has been translated into twenty languages, enjoying universal appeal in part because his clear, direct poetry so amply rewards re-reading. This bilingual collection spans Jacobsen's fifty-year career and includes, for the first time in English, his final poems. ‘Rolf Jacobsen is one of the West's greatest twentieth-century poets, who may be ranked on a par with Auden, Eliot and Montale.’—Stand Magazine.

Rolf Jacobsen (8 March 1907 - 20 February 1994) could be said to be the first modernist writer in Norway. Jacobsen's career as a writer spanned more than fifty years. He is one of Scandinavia's most distinguished poets, who launched poetic modernism in Norway with his first book, Jord og jern (Earth and Iron) in 1933. Jacobsen's work has been translated into over twenty languages. The central theme in his work is the balance between nature and technology - he was called 'the Green Poet' in Norwegian literature. Rolf Jacobsen was born in Oslo (then called Kristiania), as the son of Martin Julius Jacobsen, who had completed both medical and dental school, and Marie (Nielsen) Jacobsen, a nurse. At the age of six he moved with his family to Åsnes, where Martin Jacobsen had obtained a post as a school dentist. Rolf was educated by his mother, who had completed one year of teacher's training. In 1920 he moved to Oslo and entered a private school. During these years his uncle, who was a railway engineer, looked after him. Jacobson continued his studies at the University of Oslo for five years without graduating. In 1927 he served in the Norwegian army for six weeks. From 1937 to 1939 he was a board member of Hedmark Labour Party. Jacobsen's Jord og jern ('Earth and Iron'), written in free verse, introduced the urban world, racing cars, airplanes, and electrical turbines. Because of the choice of his subjects Jacobsen's work was connected to Marinetti and Futurism, but his view was all but romantic. He did not share the Futurists' euphoria over modern inventions, the beauty of 'a roaring motorcar, which runs like a machine-gun,' but saw the relationship between machines and human civilization as more complex. Jacobsen's diverse literary and other artistic influences included the Poetic Edda, Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., and Carl Sandburg's poetry. The title of the collection also suggests a cyclic relationship between nature and technology. In 1934 Jacobsen returned to Åsnes to take care of his father. He had joined a socialist intellectual group, Clarte, and in Åsnes he became a member of the Labor Party Leadership for Hedmark County. In Åsnes Jacobsen worked for the daily newspaper Kongsvinger Arbeiderblad, which was supported by Labor. Jacobsen's second collection of poems, Vrimmel (1935), revealed his underlying dismay at modern civilization. Jacobsen rejected Marinetti's manifesto, 'We wish to glory war...', but predicted the ominous emergence of the gas masks and machine guns. After Vrimmel, Jacobsen was silent as a poet for 16 years. In 1940 Jacobsen married Petra Tendø; they had two sons. While his parents' marriage did not succeed, Jacobsen's own marriage was harmonious. His wife died in 1985 and in his last book, Nattåpent (1995), Jacobsen published tender and mournful poems about their life together: 'Whoever loves for years / hasn't lived in vain.' During World War II, when Norway was under German military occupation, Jacobsen signed and published, in Kongsvinger Arbeiderblad, editorials that supported the German occupiers. He was also a member of the Norwegian National Socialist Party. After the war, Jacobsen was convicted of treason and sentenced to three and a half years at hard labor. After the war and hardships, Jacobsen settled at Abelsethgården in the city of Hamar. He worked as a bookseller for ten years, and then as a journalist and night editor for the newspaper Hamar Stifstidende. In 1950 he converted to Catholicism, and in 1951, Jacobsen published his third collection of poems, Fjerntog. The poems were traditional in form. In this work and in Hemmelig liv (1954), Jacobsen expressed his troubled compassion for the world around him. A new theme was the rough and lonely Norwegian scenery. Jacobsen often expressed ironically his doubts about technology, and praised the blessings of little joys. Sometimes he used humor, sometimes his poems had hymnlike solemnity. In Hamar, Jacobsen lived in an old wooden house near Lake Mjøsa and the railroad. These surroundings he also described in his poems. Jacobsen's later books include Pass for dørene - dørene lukkes (1972), Pusteøvelse (1975), and Tenk på noe annet (1979).

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Twenty Poems by Rolf Jacobsen. Madison. 1977. Seventies Press. Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly. 75 pages. The jacket design is from a 17th century Tantric painting of star clusters.

DESCRIPTION - Rolf Jacobsen was born in Oslo in 1907. He has lived for many years in Hamar, north and east of Oslo, where he worked for a newspaper. The poetic line of the nineteenth century was like a soldier standing at attention. Jacobsen was the first modern poet in Norway, and it is interesting that his modernity took the form of -`a sudden relaxation of language. In Jacobsen’s poems, lines lose the nineteenth century stiffness and the poems wave lazily about like a cat’s tail, or a snake’s head. The modernity of Rolf Jacobsen does not lie so much in any technique as it does in self-acceptance, which relaxes the line, and at the same time fills the poem with space. Many of his poems expand with a wonderfully luminous space. We see the same space in Antonio Machado’s poems, in Tomas Tranströmer’s, and in the final poems of Roethke, in so many poems in which we feel something deeply twentieth century.

Rolf Jacobsen (8 March 1907 - 20 February 1994) could be said to be the first modernist writer in Norway. Jacobsen's career as a writer spanned more than fifty years. He is one of Scandinavia's most distinguished poets, who launched poetic modernism in Norway with his first book, Jord og jern (Earth and Iron) in 1933. Jacobsen's work has been translated into over twenty languages. The central theme in his work is the balance between nature and technology - he was called 'the Green Poet' in Norwegian literature. Rolf Jacobsen was born in Oslo (then called Kristiania), as the son of Martin Julius Jacobsen, who had completed both medical and dental school, and Marie (Nielsen) Jacobsen, a nurse. At the age of six he moved with his family to Åsnes, where Martin Jacobsen had obtained a post as a school dentist. Rolf was educated by his mother, who had completed one year of teacher's training. In 1920 he moved to Oslo and entered a private school. During these years his uncle, who was a railway engineer, looked after him. Jacobson continued his studies at the University of Oslo for five years without graduating. In 1927 he served in the Norwegian army for six weeks. From 1937 to 1939 he was a board member of Hedmark Labour Party. Jacobsen's Jord og jern ('Earth and Iron'), written in free verse, introduced the urban world, racing cars, airplanes, and electrical turbines. Because of the choice of his subjects Jacobsen's work was connected to Marinetti and Futurism, but his view was all but romantic. He did not share the Futurists' euphoria over modern inventions, the beauty of 'a roaring motorcar, which runs like a machine-gun,' but saw the relationship between machines and human civilization as more complex. Jacobsen's diverse literary and other artistic influences included the Poetic Edda, Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., and Carl Sandburg's poetry. The title of the collection also suggests a cyclic relationship between nature and technology. In 1934 Jacobsen returned to Åsnes to take care of his father. He had joined a socialist intellectual group, Clarte, and in Åsnes he became a member of the Labor Party Leadership for Hedmark County. In Åsnes Jacobsen worked for the daily newspaper Kongsvinger Arbeiderblad, which was supported by Labor. Jacobsen's second collection of poems, Vrimmel (1935), revealed his underlying dismay at modern civilization. Jacobsen rejected Marinetti's manifesto, 'We wish to glory war...', but predicted the ominous emergence of the gas masks and machine guns. After Vrimmel, Jacobsen was silent as a poet for 16 years. In 1940 Jacobsen married Petra Tendø; they had two sons. While his parents' marriage did not succeed, Jacobsen's own marriage was harmonious. His wife died in 1985 and in his last book, Nattåpent (1995), Jacobsen published tender and mournful poems about their life together: 'Whoever loves for years / hasn't lived in vain.' During World War II, when Norway was under German military occupation, Jacobsen signed and published, in Kongsvinger Arbeiderblad, editorials that supported the German occupiers. He was also a member of the Norwegian National Socialist Party. After the war, Jacobsen was convicted of treason and sentenced to three and a half years at hard labor. After the war and hardships, Jacobsen settled at Abelsethgården in the city of Hamar. He worked as a bookseller for ten years, and then as a journalist and night editor for the newspaper Hamar Stifstidende. In 1950 he converted to Catholicism, and in 1951, Jacobsen published his third collection of poems, Fjerntog. The poems were traditional in form. In this work and in Hemmelig liv (1954), Jacobsen expressed his troubled compassion for the world around him. A new theme was the rough and lonely Norwegian scenery. Jacobsen often expressed ironically his doubts about technology, and praised the blessings of little joys. Sometimes he used humor, sometimes his poems had hymnlike solemnity. In Hamar, Jacobsen lived in an old wooden house near Lake Mjøsa and the railroad. These surroundings he also described in his poems. Jacobsen's later books include Pass for dørene - dørene lukkes (1972), Pusteøvelse (1975), and Tenk på noe annet (1979).

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Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen. New York. 1919. American-Scandinavian Foundation. Translated From The Danish By Hanna Astrup Larsen. hardcover. 

DESCRIPTION - Originally published in 1880, the classic novel NIELS LYHNE is the story of a young man's existential struggle, told with great psychological insight. It is about romanticism, atheism, and the turmoil of an artistic temperament caught between dreams and reality. And it is about the relationships between men and women, which are doomed to failure when the woman is elevated to a goddess and not perceived as a human being. Jens Peter Jacobsen produced only a small body of work in his short lifetime - two novels, a volume of short stories, and some poetry - yet these works have had a significant impact on some of the most important writers and artists of this century. Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, August Strindberg, Jean Giraudoux, Hermann Hesse, and Henrik Ibsen: all expressed admiration for Jacobsen's work. Both James Joyce and Stefan Zweig wanted to learn Danish in order to read Niels Lyhne in the original. Adventurer T. E. Lawrence pronounced Niels Lyhne a 'magnificent' book. And Alberto Giacometti, who rarely traveled, accepted an invitation to visit Denmark for an exhibition of his work because he wanted to see the country of Jens Peter Jacobsen. But it was the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who felt most indebted to Jacobsen. In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke lavishes praise on his novel, urging his readers to experience this 'book of splendors and depths. ' 'NIELS LYHNE - how ardently, how passionately we loved this book in the first years of youthful awareness: it was the Werther of our generation. Countless times we read this melancholy biography, knew whole pages of it by heart, and the thin, worn Reclam volume accompanied us to school and late at night to bed; even today, when I look up some passages in it, I am at once able to write them down word for word from memory, because we had so often, so passionately absorbed those scenes into our lives. ' - STEFAN ZWEIG. Rilke said that Jacobsen, more than any other writer, bad given him 'the greatest experience of the essence of creativity, its depths and eternity. '. 'Now NIELS LYHNE will open to you, a book of splendors and depths; the more often one reads it, the more everything seems to be contained within it, from life's most imperceptible fragrances to the full, enormous taste of its heaviest fruits. In it there is nothing that does not seem to have been understood, held, lived, and known in memory's wavering echo; no experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others. You will experience the great happiness of reading this book for the first time, and will move through its numberless surprises as if you were in a new dream. ' - RAINER MARIA RILKE. 'Jacobsen has made a more profound impression on my heart than any other reading in recent years. ' - SIGMUND FREUD. 'Jacobsen's book is a fine work of literature in every respect; yes, I dare say it is among the most exceptional that our time has produced. ' - HENRIK IBSEN. 'I am quite Nordically inclined, and perhaps it is J. P. Jacobsen who has had the greatest influence on my style so far. ' - THOMAS MANN. 'In Jacobsen we have the earliest and noblest example of an author who combines a powerful imagination and a wistfully tender nature with all the finesse of the most highly developed realism. He finds words full of pregnant vividness for every manifestation of Nature, for every blade of grass by the wayside, for every visible beauty. And then he attempts, with dark yearning, to translate this huge talent for portrayal, this most refined technique of expression, to the life of the soul. Not as a realistic psychologist, but as a dreamer and explorer on the pathless sea of the unknown.' - HERMANN HESSE.

 Other editions:

Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen. Seattle. 1990. Fjord Press. 0940242303. Translated from the Danish Tiina Nunnally. 217 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting of Jens Peter Jacobsen by Ernst Josephson. 

DESCRIPTION - Now available to American readers in a new translation. Fjord Press books are printed on acid-free paper for maximum longevity and durability. NIELS LYHNE is the second in the Modern Classics series published by Fjord Press.

Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen. New York. 2006. Penguin Books. 0143039814. Translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally. Introduction by Eric O. Johannesson. 187 pages. paperback. Cover painting - Melancholy' by Edvard Munch (1863-1944). 

DESCRIPTION - Niels Lyhne is an aspiring poet, torn between romanticism and realism, faith and reason. As he matures, he encounters six strong-willed women, all of whom try to caution him about the dangers of idealized love. But he fails to heed their warnings and, unable to find a replacement for the rejected Christian faith of his childhood, succumbs to disillusionment. A modern-day protagonist sometimes compared to Hamlet, Niels Lyhne faces the anguish of the human condition without the solace of conventional religious beliefs. His psychological and spiritual dilemmas are at the heart of Jacobsen’s great masterpiece of Danish literature. In Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning translation readers will rediscover a writer deeply revered by such literary giants as Rilke, Ibsen, Mann, and Hesse. ‘In Jacobsen we have the earliest and noblest example of an author who combines a powerful imagination and a wistfully tender nature with all the finesse of the most highly developed realism.’ - Hermann Hesse. Winner of the PEN Center USA West Translation Award.

Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) was a Danish novelist, poet, and scientist, in Denmark often just written as J. P. Jacobsen and pronounced as I. P. Jacobsen. He began the naturalist movement in Danish literature and was a part of the Modern Break-Through. The fine literary work of Jacobsen is small: two novels, seven short-stories, and one volume of posthumous poems, but it places him as one of the most influential Danish writers. In spite of his not very extensive work Jacobsen s international influence is rather strong. In Germany both his novels and poems were widely read and they are known to have influenced both Rilke and Thomas Mann just as it has probably made impression on Lawrence. His works include: Marie Grubbe (1876), Niels Lyhne (1880), and Mogens and Other Stories (1882).

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The Bern Book: A Record of a Voyage of the Mind by Vincent O. Carter. New York. 1973. John Day. 297 pages. Jacket design by Robert Palevitz. 0381982378.

A thoughtful exploration of expatriation. An odd and fascinating book, that may not have been published at all if not for the efforts of writer Herbert Lottman. 

DESCRIPTION - THE BERN BOOK is Vincent Carter's meandering reflection on being the only black man in the town of Bern, Switzerland, where he lived for over 30 years. He had gone there from Kansas City, via Paris Carter had a desperate need to write-but not about black power, which was then the only subject one expected of a black writer. He rather needed to explore himself, as so many other expatriates had done before him. The book is more akin to Robert Burton's 17th-century AN ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLy than to Jimmy Baldwin's THE FIRE NEXT TIME. After a number of attempts to help get Carter's manuscript published, the literary biographer, Herbert Lottman, wrote an essay on this author that appeared in a cultural quarterly. Then, a New York publisher decided to bring out THE BERN BOOK after all-using Lottman's essay as an introduction.

VINCENT O. CARTER was born in Kansas City in 1924. At seventeen he was drafted into the U. S. Army. He landed on a Normandy beachhead and took part in the drive toward Paris. Back in the United States, he earned a college degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and spent a graduate year at Wayne State in Detroit. Eventually he returned to Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam before settling in Bern, where he spent the rest of his life in a sort of self-imposed exile. His only work published during his lifetime was THE BERN BOOK: A RECORD OF THE VOYAGE OF THE MIND, a memoir of his life in the Swiss capital during the 1950s. He completed a draft manuscript for SUCH SWEET THUNDER in 1963. Despite receiving enthusiastic support from some in the literary world, the manuscript did not deliver what publishers expected from 'Negro literature' at the time, and after enduring a round of rejections Carter shelved the project. He died in Bern in 1983.

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Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul. New York. 1992. Free Press. 640 pages. Cover design by Michael Langenstein. 0029277256. hardcover.

The pitfalls of rationalism and and the rise of bureaucracy.

 DESCRIPTION - In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about 'invasive government,' yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our 'rational elites' have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul show that they have also been responsible for moist of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth, which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - 'Voltaire's bastards' - whose cult of scientific management if bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose people increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to 'solutions', he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis.

JOHN RALSTON SAUL holds a Ph. D. in history from King's College, ran a Paris-based investment firm, worked as a Canadian oil executive, and has written extensively about North Africa and Southeast Asia. His novel, THE PARADISE EATER, won the Premio Letteratio Internazionale in 1990.

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A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr by Arnold A. Rogow. New York. 1998. Hill & Wang. 351 pages. Jacket design by Lynn Buckley. 0809047535. hardcover.

A look at the difficult and ultimately tragic relationship between two of America's founding fathers.

DESCRIPTION - For almost two centuries, historians have had difficulty explaining the extraordinary duel that in July 1804 killed Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, and ended Vice President Aaron Burr's political career. It was well known that Hamilton disliked Burr--perhaps out of a protective fear for his own power and influence, or perhaps, according to another theory, because of jealousy over the attentions of one or more women. When Burr finally threw down his challenge it followed more than a dozen years of difficult relations and political strife, culminating a few months earlier in Burr's defeat In the race for the governorship of New York, a defeat he attributed to Hamilton's machinations. But why a duel? In A FATAL FRIENDSHIP, the distinguished political scientist and writer Arnold Rogow demonstrates for the first time that the roots of the fatal encounter lay not in Burr's political or private conduct but, rather, in Hamilton's conflicted history and character. With his detailed archival research, his close examination of the friendship between the two heroic figures, and his bold, Imaginative writing, Rogow's brilliant new book will change forever our understanding of honor, politics, and friendship In the early American Republic.

ARNOLD A. ROGOW (August 10, 1924, Harrisburg, PA - February 14, 2006, Manhattan, New York City, NY) taught at Stanford, the University of Iowa, and the City University of New York. He is the author of many other hooks, including THOMAS HOBBES: RADICAL IN THE SERVICE OF REACTION, JAMES FORRESTAL: A STUDY OF PERSONALITY, POLITICS, AND POLICY, and THE DYING OF THE LIGHT. He lived in New York City.

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The Way Home by George Pelecanos. New York & Boston. 2009. Little Brown. 325 pages. Jacket design by Keith Hayes. 9780316156493. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A brilliant new novel about fathers and Fans and the dangers of modern life by ‘one of the most literary of Americas crime Writers’ BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS IN A HOUSE he's remodeling, Christopher Flynn discovers something very tempting - and troubling. Summoning every bit of maturity and every lesson he's learned the hard way, Chris leaves what he found where he found it and tells his job partner to forget it, too. Knowing trouble when he sees it - and walking the other way - is a habit Chris is still learning. Chris's father, Thomas Flynn, runs the family business where Chris and his friends have found work. Thomas is just getting comfortable with the idea that his son is grown, working, and on the right path at last. Then one day Chris doesn't show up for work - and his father knows deep in his bones that danger has found him. Although he wishes it weren't so, he also knows that no parent can protect a child from all the world's evils. Sometimes you have to let them find their own way home. THE WAY HOME is the most powerful novel yet from the electrifying George Pelecanos, whose work has been compared to that of Dennis Lehane and Richard Price, writers ‘who push the boundaries of crime writing into literary territory’ As profound and engrossing as Pelecanos's work as a writer and producer on The Wire, THE WAY HOME is an unforgettable novel of fathers' hopes and sons' ambitions, of love, drive, and forgiveness.

George P. Pelecanos (born 18 February 1957) is an American author. Many of his works are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. He worked extensively on the HBO series The Wire. Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private investigator. After the success of his first four novels, the Stefanos-narrated A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, and the non-series (though some characters do cross over) Shoedog, Pelecanos switched his narrative style considerably and expanded the scope of his fiction with his D.C. Quartet. He has commented that he did not feel he had the ability to be this ambitious earlier in his career. The quartet, often compared to James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, spanned several decades and communities within the changing population of Washington. Now writing in the third person, Pelecanos relegated Stefanos to a supporting character and introduced his first 'salt and pepper' team of crime fighters, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. In The Big Blowdown, set a generation before Karras and Clay would appear (the 1950s), Pelecanos followed the lives of dozens of D.C. residents, tracking the challenges and changes that the second half of the twentieth century presented to Washingtonians. King Suckerman, set in the 1970s and generally regarded as the fans' favorite, introduced the recurring theme of basketball in Pelecanos' fiction. Typically, he employs the sport as a symbol of cooperation amongst the races, suggesting the dynamism of D.C. as reflective of the good will generated by multi-ethnic pick up games. However, he also indulges the reverse of the equation, wherein the basketball court becomes the site of unresolved hostilities. In such cases, violent criminal behavior typically emerges amongst the participants, usually escalating the mystery. The Sweet Forever (1980s) and Shame the Devil (1990s) closed the quartet and Pelecanos retired Stefanos and the other characters that populated the novels. (Stefanos and other characters do re-appear in subsequent works.) In 2001, he introduced a new team of private detectives, Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, as the protagonists of Right as Rain. They have subsequently starred in the author's more recent works Hell to Pay (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2003) and Soul Circus. While these books have cemented the author's reputation as one of the best current American crime writers and sold consistently, they have not garnered the critical and cult affection his D.C. quartet did. Rather, they seem to be continuing the author's well received formula of witty protagonists chasing unconflicted criminals behind the backdrop of popular culture references and D.C. landmarks. Perhaps sensing this, Pelecanos again switched his focus in his 2004 novel, Hard Revolution, taking one of his new detectives, Derek Strange, back in time to his early days on the D.C. police force. In another interesting move, Pelecanos attached a CD to the book itself, emulating Michael Connelly who included a CD with his 2003 Harry Bosch book Lost Light. In 2005, Pelecanos saw another novel published, Drama City. This book revisited the examination of dogfighting begun in his book Hell To Pay. Pelecanos is a dog owner and has written about his views of dogfighting. In 2006 he published The Night Gardener, which was a major change of style and which featured a cameo of himself. Pelecanos has also published short fiction in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including Measures of Poison and Usual Suspects. His reviews have been published in The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. The Turnaround was published in August 2008, reflecting a return to his roots, as the novel opens in the 70s in a Greek diner, and a continuation of his more modern style in the portion set in the present. The Turnaround won the 2008's Hammett Prize. In 2011, Pelecanos published 'The Cut', introducing the character Spero Lucas, a young veteran of the Iraq war. The former Marine works part-time as a private investigator for a D.C. defense attorney as well as taking jobs finding stolen items for a 40% cut of the value of the returned item. In 2013, Pelecanos published 'The Double', the second Spero Lucas book. Pelecanos has written and produced for HBO's The Wire and is part of a literary circle with The Wire creator David Simon and novelist Laura Lippman. Simon sought out Pelecanos after reading his work. Simon was recommended his novels several times but did not read his work initially because of territorial prejudice; Simon is from Baltimore. Once Simon received further recommendations, including one from Lippman, he tried The Sweet Forever and changed his mind. The two writers have much in common including a childhood in Silver Spring, Maryland, attendance at the University of Maryland and their interest in the 'fate of the American city and the black urban poor'. They first met at the funeral of a mutual friend shortly after Simon delivered the pilot episode. Simon pitched Pelecanos the idea of The Wire as a novel for television about the American city as Pelecanos drove him home. Pelecanos was excited about the prospect of writing something more than simple mystery for television as he strived to exceed the boundaries of genre in his novels. Pelecanos joined the crew as a writer for the first season in 2002. He wrote the teleplay for the seasons's penultimate episode 'Cleaning Up' from a story by Simon and Ed Burns. Pelecanos was promoted to producer for the second season in 2003. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Duck and Cover' and 'Bad Dreams' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. He remained a writer and producer for the third season in 2004. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Hamsterdam' and 'Middle Ground' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. Simon wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Slapstick' from a story he co-wrote with Pelecanos. Simon and Pelecanos' collaboration on 'Middle Ground' received the show's first Emmy Award nomination, in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Pelecanos left the production staff of The Wire after the show's third season to concentrate on writing his novel The Night Gardener. His role as a producer was taken on by Eric Overmyer. Pelecanos remained a writer for the fourth season in 2006. He wrote the teleplay for the penultimate episode 'That's Got His Own' from a story he co-wrote with producer Ed Burns. Simon has commented that he missed having Pelecanos working on the show full-time but was a fan of The Night Gardener. Simon also spent time embedded with a homicide unit while researching his own book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Pelecanos and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Pelecanos returned as a writer for the series fifth and final season. He wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Late Editions' from a story he co-wrote with Simon. Pelecanos and the writing staff were again nominated for the WGA award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the fifth season but Mad Men won the award. Following the conclusion of The Wire Pelecanos joined the crew of the HBO World War II mini-series The Pacific as a co-producer and writer. After a lengthy production process the series aired in 2010. He co-wrote 'Part 3' of the series with fellow co-producer Michelle Ashford. The episode focused on Marines on leave in Australia and featured a displaced Greek family in a prominent guest role. Pelecanos saw the project as a chance to make a tribute to his father, Pete Pelecanos, who served as a Marine in the Philippines.Also in 2010 Pelecanos joined the crew of HBO New Orleans drama Treme as a writer. The series was created by Simon and Overmeyer. It follows the lives of residents of the Tremé neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. Pelecanos wrote the teleplay for the episode 'At the Foot of Canal Street' from a story he co-wrote with Overmyer. Pelecanos returned as a Consulting Producer and writer for the second season in 2011. He joined the crew full time as a writer and executive producer for the third season in 2012. He remained in this role for the fourth and final season in 2013. Following the conclusion of Treme Pelecanos worked with Overmyer on his next series Bosch. The series was developed by Overmyer and is based on the series of novels by Michael Connelly. The series stars The Wire alumni Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick. Pelecanos and Michael Connelly co-wrote the show's fourth episode 'Fugazi'. As of 2006, Pelecanos lives in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and three children.

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The Big Blowdown by George P. Pelecanos. New York. 1996. St Martin's Press. 314 pages. Jacket Design And Artwork By Charles Rue Woods. Jacket Photograph By Eve Arnold/Magnum. 0312142846. May 1996. hardcover.

George Pelecanos is one of the best American crime fiction writers of recent times. He is a modern-day Balzac, featuring a host of returning characters throughtout his novels. Major characters from one novel will often make cameo appearances in other stories, giving the reader an opportunity to see those characters in a whole new light. The Big Blowdown, while not his first novel, is chronologically first in the series. 

DESCRIPTION - For Joey Recevo and Pete Karras, two kids from one of Washington's rougher neighborhoods, the easiest work to find after the War is all criminal - providing a little muscle for a local boss. But Karras is soft on his fellow immigrants, and the boss can't let his mob get soft, so one of his boys gives Karras a painful lesson. Three years later, it's this same mob that figures big Nick Stefanos's grill needs protection - and this decision will, once again, bring Joey and Pete face-to-face. In this final confrontation, the two of them will find the meaning of friendship and honor, and its cost. Powerfully told, elegantly wrought, THE BIG BLOWDOWN delivers on all of George Pelecanos's early promise and establishes him at the forefront of today's crime writers. 'Bold and broad-shouldered, a crime epic filled with passionate characters and the gritty life of the street. Strongly felt and sharply written. Pelecanos lifted me from my chair and hurled me right into the mean D. C. streets of the 1950s. Bravo!' - T. Jefferson Parker, author of SUMMER OF FEAR. 'Pelecanos's books get into your blood like a shot and a beer after a third shift. Definitely my favorite writer working today. You can stay in on Saturday night now - Pelecanos will fill you in on what happened. ' - Peter Farrelly, author of OUTSIDE PROVIDENCE.

George P. Pelecanos (born 18 February 1957) is an American author. Many of his works are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. He worked extensively on the HBO series The Wire. Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private investigator. After the success of his first four novels, the Stefanos-narrated A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, and the non-series (though some characters do cross over) Shoedog, Pelecanos switched his narrative style considerably and expanded the scope of his fiction with his D.C. Quartet. He has commented that he did not feel he had the ability to be this ambitious earlier in his career. The quartet, often compared to James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, spanned several decades and communities within the changing population of Washington. Now writing in the third person, Pelecanos relegated Stefanos to a supporting character and introduced his first 'salt and pepper' team of crime fighters, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. In The Big Blowdown, set a generation before Karras and Clay would appear (the 1950s), Pelecanos followed the lives of dozens of D.C. residents, tracking the challenges and changes that the second half of the twentieth century presented to Washingtonians. King Suckerman, set in the 1970s and generally regarded as the fans' favorite, introduced the recurring theme of basketball in Pelecanos' fiction. Typically, he employs the sport as a symbol of cooperation amongst the races, suggesting the dynamism of D.C. as reflective of the good will generated by multi-ethnic pick up games. However, he also indulges the reverse of the equation, wherein the basketball court becomes the site of unresolved hostilities. In such cases, violent criminal behavior typically emerges amongst the participants, usually escalating the mystery. The Sweet Forever (1980s) and Shame the Devil (1990s) closed the quartet and Pelecanos retired Stefanos and the other characters that populated the novels. (Stefanos and other characters do re-appear in subsequent works.) In 2001, he introduced a new team of private detectives, Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, as the protagonists of Right as Rain. They have subsequently starred in the author's more recent works Hell to Pay (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2003) and Soul Circus. While these books have cemented the author's reputation as one of the best current American crime writers and sold consistently, they have not garnered the critical and cult affection his D.C. quartet did. Rather, they seem to be continuing the author's well received formula of witty protagonists chasing unconflicted criminals behind the backdrop of popular culture references and D.C. landmarks. Perhaps sensing this, Pelecanos again switched his focus in his 2004 novel, Hard Revolution, taking one of his new detectives, Derek Strange, back in time to his early days on the D.C. police force. In another interesting move, Pelecanos attached a CD to the book itself, emulating Michael Connelly who included a CD with his 2003 Harry Bosch book Lost Light. In 2005, Pelecanos saw another novel published, Drama City. This book revisited the examination of dogfighting begun in his book Hell To Pay. Pelecanos is a dog owner and has written about his views of dogfighting. In 2006 he published The Night Gardener, which was a major change of style and which featured a cameo of himself. Pelecanos has also published short fiction in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including Measures of Poison and Usual Suspects. His reviews have been published in The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. The Turnaround was published in August 2008, reflecting a return to his roots, as the novel opens in the 70s in a Greek diner, and a continuation of his more modern style in the portion set in the present. The Turnaround won the 2008's Hammett Prize. In 2011, Pelecanos published 'The Cut', introducing the character Spero Lucas, a young veteran of the Iraq war. The former Marine works part-time as a private investigator for a D.C. defense attorney as well as taking jobs finding stolen items for a 40% cut of the value of the returned item. In 2013, Pelecanos published 'The Double', the second Spero Lucas book. Pelecanos has written and produced for HBO's The Wire and is part of a literary circle with The Wire creator David Simon and novelist Laura Lippman. Simon sought out Pelecanos after reading his work. Simon was recommended his novels several times but did not read his work initially because of territorial prejudice; Simon is from Baltimore. Once Simon received further recommendations, including one from Lippman, he tried The Sweet Forever and changed his mind. The two writers have much in common including a childhood in Silver Spring, Maryland, attendance at the University of Maryland and their interest in the 'fate of the American city and the black urban poor'. They first met at the funeral of a mutual friend shortly after Simon delivered the pilot episode. Simon pitched Pelecanos the idea of The Wire as a novel for television about the American city as Pelecanos drove him home. Pelecanos was excited about the prospect of writing something more than simple mystery for television as he strived to exceed the boundaries of genre in his novels. Pelecanos joined the crew as a writer for the first season in 2002. He wrote the teleplay for the seasons's penultimate episode 'Cleaning Up' from a story by Simon and Ed Burns. Pelecanos was promoted to producer for the second season in 2003. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Duck and Cover' and 'Bad Dreams' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. He remained a writer and producer for the third season in 2004. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Hamsterdam' and 'Middle Ground' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. Simon wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Slapstick' from a story he co-wrote with Pelecanos. Simon and Pelecanos' collaboration on 'Middle Ground' received the show's first Emmy Award nomination, in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Pelecanos left the production staff of The Wire after the show's third season to concentrate on writing his novel The Night Gardener. His role as a producer was taken on by Eric Overmyer. Pelecanos remained a writer for the fourth season in 2006. He wrote the teleplay for the penultimate episode 'That's Got His Own' from a story he co-wrote with producer Ed Burns. Simon has commented that he missed having Pelecanos working on the show full-time but was a fan of The Night Gardener. Simon also spent time embedded with a homicide unit while researching his own book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Pelecanos and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Pelecanos returned as a writer for the series fifth and final season. He wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Late Editions' from a story he co-wrote with Simon. Pelecanos and the writing staff were again nominated for the WGA award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the fifth season but Mad Men won the award. Following the conclusion of The Wire Pelecanos joined the crew of the HBO World War II mini-series The Pacific as a co-producer and writer. After a lengthy production process the series aired in 2010. He co-wrote 'Part 3' of the series with fellow co-producer Michelle Ashford. The episode focused on Marines on leave in Australia and featured a displaced Greek family in a prominent guest role. Pelecanos saw the project as a chance to make a tribute to his father, Pete Pelecanos, who served as a Marine in the Philippines.Also in 2010 Pelecanos joined the crew of HBO New Orleans drama Treme as a writer. The series was created by Simon and Overmeyer. It follows the lives of residents of the Tremé neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. Pelecanos wrote the teleplay for the episode 'At the Foot of Canal Street' from a story he co-wrote with Overmyer. Pelecanos returned as a Consulting Producer and writer for the second season in 2011. He joined the crew full time as a writer and executive producer for the third season in 2012. He remained in this role for the fourth and final season in 2013. Following the conclusion of Treme Pelecanos worked with Overmyer on his next series Bosch. The series was developed by Overmyer and is based on the series of novels by Michael Connelly. The series stars The Wire alumni Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick. Pelecanos and Michael Connelly co-wrote the show's fourth episode 'Fugazi'. As of 2006, Pelecanos lives in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and three children.

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A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos. New York. 1992. St Martin's Press. 216 pages. Jacket painting by Tony LiMuaco. 0312069707. April 1992. hardcover.

In this hard-boiled first novel, Nick Stefanos, advertising manager of the stereo store Nutty Nathans turned private detective, searches for a missing boy as a favor, and uncovers much more than he would have ever expected

DESCRIPTION - A rock gets pushed at the top of a hill, and it begins to roll, and then it doesn't matter who did the pushing. What matters is the damage done. So how it started, I suppose, is insignificant. Because what sticks now is how it ended: with the sudden blast of smoke of automatic weapons, and the low moan of those who are about to die. As the advertising director of Nutty Nathan's - 'The Miser Who Saves You Money!' - Nick Stefanos knew all the tricks of the electronics business. Blow-out sales and shady deals were his life. When one of the stockboys disappears, it's not news: just another young metalhead who went off chasing some dream of big money and easy living. But the kid reminded Nick of himself twelve years ago: an angry punk hooked on speed, metal and the fast life. So when the boy's grandfather begs Nick to try to find the kid, Nick says he'll try. And once it begins to roll, it doesn't matter who did the pushing. What matters is the damage done. A FIRING OFFENSE is a debut novel packed with exceptional veracity and tenacious emotion, a tough and tender view of both the Washington, D. C. , that lies behind the politician's lies and of the truths that lie within our hearts.

George P. Pelecanos (born 18 February 1957) is an American author. Many of his works are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. He worked extensively on the HBO series The Wire. Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private investigator. After the success of his first four novels, the Stefanos-narrated A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, and the non-series (though some characters do cross over) Shoedog, Pelecanos switched his narrative style considerably and expanded the scope of his fiction with his D.C. Quartet. He has commented that he did not feel he had the ability to be this ambitious earlier in his career. The quartet, often compared to James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, spanned several decades and communities within the changing population of Washington. Now writing in the third person, Pelecanos relegated Stefanos to a supporting character and introduced his first 'salt and pepper' team of crime fighters, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. In The Big Blowdown, set a generation before Karras and Clay would appear (the 1950s), Pelecanos followed the lives of dozens of D.C. residents, tracking the challenges and changes that the second half of the twentieth century presented to Washingtonians. King Suckerman, set in the 1970s and generally regarded as the fans' favorite, introduced the recurring theme of basketball in Pelecanos' fiction. Typically, he employs the sport as a symbol of cooperation amongst the races, suggesting the dynamism of D.C. as reflective of the good will generated by multi-ethnic pick up games. However, he also indulges the reverse of the equation, wherein the basketball court becomes the site of unresolved hostilities. In such cases, violent criminal behavior typically emerges amongst the participants, usually escalating the mystery. The Sweet Forever (1980s) and Shame the Devil (1990s) closed the quartet and Pelecanos retired Stefanos and the other characters that populated the novels. (Stefanos and other characters do re-appear in subsequent works.) In 2001, he introduced a new team of private detectives, Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, as the protagonists of Right as Rain. They have subsequently starred in the author's more recent works Hell to Pay (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2003) and Soul Circus. While these books have cemented the author's reputation as one of the best current American crime writers and sold consistently, they have not garnered the critical and cult affection his D.C. quartet did. Rather, they seem to be continuing the author's well received formula of witty protagonists chasing unconflicted criminals behind the backdrop of popular culture references and D.C. landmarks. Perhaps sensing this, Pelecanos again switched his focus in his 2004 novel, Hard Revolution, taking one of his new detectives, Derek Strange, back in time to his early days on the D.C. police force. In another interesting move, Pelecanos attached a CD to the book itself, emulating Michael Connelly who included a CD with his 2003 Harry Bosch book Lost Light. In 2005, Pelecanos saw another novel published, Drama City. This book revisited the examination of dogfighting begun in his book Hell To Pay. Pelecanos is a dog owner and has written about his views of dogfighting. In 2006 he published The Night Gardener, which was a major change of style and which featured a cameo of himself. Pelecanos has also published short fiction in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including Measures of Poison and Usual Suspects. His reviews have been published in The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. The Turnaround was published in August 2008, reflecting a return to his roots, as the novel opens in the 70s in a Greek diner, and a continuation of his more modern style in the portion set in the present. The Turnaround won the 2008's Hammett Prize. In 2011, Pelecanos published 'The Cut', introducing the character Spero Lucas, a young veteran of the Iraq war. The former Marine works part-time as a private investigator for a D.C. defense attorney as well as taking jobs finding stolen items for a 40% cut of the value of the returned item. In 2013, Pelecanos published 'The Double', the second Spero Lucas book. Pelecanos has written and produced for HBO's The Wire and is part of a literary circle with The Wire creator David Simon and novelist Laura Lippman. Simon sought out Pelecanos after reading his work. Simon was recommended his novels several times but did not read his work initially because of territorial prejudice; Simon is from Baltimore. Once Simon received further recommendations, including one from Lippman, he tried The Sweet Forever and changed his mind. The two writers have much in common including a childhood in Silver Spring, Maryland, attendance at the University of Maryland and their interest in the 'fate of the American city and the black urban poor'. They first met at the funeral of a mutual friend shortly after Simon delivered the pilot episode. Simon pitched Pelecanos the idea of The Wire as a novel for television about the American city as Pelecanos drove him home. Pelecanos was excited about the prospect of writing something more than simple mystery for television as he strived to exceed the boundaries of genre in his novels. Pelecanos joined the crew as a writer for the first season in 2002. He wrote the teleplay for the seasons's penultimate episode 'Cleaning Up' from a story by Simon and Ed Burns. Pelecanos was promoted to producer for the second season in 2003. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Duck and Cover' and 'Bad Dreams' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. He remained a writer and producer for the third season in 2004. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Hamsterdam' and 'Middle Ground' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. Simon wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Slapstick' from a story he co-wrote with Pelecanos. Simon and Pelecanos' collaboration on 'Middle Ground' received the show's first Emmy Award nomination, in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Pelecanos left the production staff of The Wire after the show's third season to concentrate on writing his novel The Night Gardener. His role as a producer was taken on by Eric Overmyer. Pelecanos remained a writer for the fourth season in 2006. He wrote the teleplay for the penultimate episode 'That's Got His Own' from a story he co-wrote with producer Ed Burns. Simon has commented that he missed having Pelecanos working on the show full-time but was a fan of The Night Gardener. Simon also spent time embedded with a homicide unit while researching his own book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Pelecanos and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Pelecanos returned as a writer for the series fifth and final season. He wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Late Editions' from a story he co-wrote with Simon. Pelecanos and the writing staff were again nominated for the WGA award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the fifth season but Mad Men won the award. Following the conclusion of The Wire Pelecanos joined the crew of the HBO World War II mini-series The Pacific as a co-producer and writer. After a lengthy production process the series aired in 2010. He co-wrote 'Part 3' of the series with fellow co-producer Michelle Ashford. The episode focused on Marines on leave in Australia and featured a displaced Greek family in a prominent guest role. Pelecanos saw the project as a chance to make a tribute to his father, Pete Pelecanos, who served as a Marine in the Philippines.Also in 2010 Pelecanos joined the crew of HBO New Orleans drama Treme as a writer. The series was created by Simon and Overmeyer. It follows the lives of residents of the Tremé neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. Pelecanos wrote the teleplay for the episode 'At the Foot of Canal Street' from a story he co-wrote with Overmyer. Pelecanos returned as a Consulting Producer and writer for the second season in 2011. He joined the crew full time as a writer and executive producer for the third season in 2012. He remained in this role for the fourth and final season in 2013. Following the conclusion of Treme Pelecanos worked with Overmyer on his next series Bosch. The series was developed by Overmyer and is based on the series of novels by Michael Connelly. The series stars The Wire alumni Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick. Pelecanos and Michael Connelly co-wrote the show's fourth episode 'Fugazi'. As of 2006, Pelecanos lives in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and three children.

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Nick's Trip: A Nick Stefanos Mystery by George P. Pelecanos. New York. 1993. St Martin's Press. 276 pages. Jacket art by John Dawson. 0312088620. March 1993. hardcover.

NICK'S TRIP continues the journey of Nick Stefanos, who looks for a friend's missing wife while tending bar and generally leading a life of dissolution. Sound wholesome? Not even close. But a hard-boiled novel of great power and heart, it definitely is.

DESCRIPTION - After his 'promising' (Kirkus Reviews} debut novel. A FIRING OFFENSE. George Pelecanos has come into his own with this complex and powerful new novel of virtue and betrayal. Nick Stefanos, having earned his P. I. license, quickly discovers that snapping photos of unfaithful husbands isn't his thing. Tending bar at the Spot, Nick is closing one night when his high school friend Billy Goodrich shows up. Billy's wife is gone. Nick says he'll find her. And with that first step. Nick sets out on a one-way path that'll take him through a sewer of theft and intrigue and love. Exceptionally moving and true-to-life, NICK'S TRIP is a virtuoso work from one of today's hottest voices in hard-boiled fiction. 'NICK'S TRIP is the kind of book you're always hoping to find and so rarely do. What an authentic, human voice. ' - James Sallis.

George P. Pelecanos (born 18 February 1957) is an American author. Many of his works are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. He worked extensively on the HBO series The Wire. Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private investigator. After the success of his first four novels, the Stefanos-narrated A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, and the non-series (though some characters do cross over) Shoedog, Pelecanos switched his narrative style considerably and expanded the scope of his fiction with his D.C. Quartet. He has commented that he did not feel he had the ability to be this ambitious earlier in his career. The quartet, often compared to James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, spanned several decades and communities within the changing population of Washington. Now writing in the third person, Pelecanos relegated Stefanos to a supporting character and introduced his first 'salt and pepper' team of crime fighters, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. In The Big Blowdown, set a generation before Karras and Clay would appear (the 1950s), Pelecanos followed the lives of dozens of D.C. residents, tracking the challenges and changes that the second half of the twentieth century presented to Washingtonians. King Suckerman, set in the 1970s and generally regarded as the fans' favorite, introduced the recurring theme of basketball in Pelecanos' fiction. Typically, he employs the sport as a symbol of cooperation amongst the races, suggesting the dynamism of D.C. as reflective of the good will generated by multi-ethnic pick up games. However, he also indulges the reverse of the equation, wherein the basketball court becomes the site of unresolved hostilities. In such cases, violent criminal behavior typically emerges amongst the participants, usually escalating the mystery. The Sweet Forever (1980s) and Shame the Devil (1990s) closed the quartet and Pelecanos retired Stefanos and the other characters that populated the novels. (Stefanos and other characters do re-appear in subsequent works.) In 2001, he introduced a new team of private detectives, Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, as the protagonists of Right as Rain. They have subsequently starred in the author's more recent works Hell to Pay (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2003) and Soul Circus. While these books have cemented the author's reputation as one of the best current American crime writers and sold consistently, they have not garnered the critical and cult affection his D.C. quartet did. Rather, they seem to be continuing the author's well received formula of witty protagonists chasing unconflicted criminals behind the backdrop of popular culture references and D.C. landmarks. Perhaps sensing this, Pelecanos again switched his focus in his 2004 novel, Hard Revolution, taking one of his new detectives, Derek Strange, back in time to his early days on the D.C. police force. In another interesting move, Pelecanos attached a CD to the book itself, emulating Michael Connelly who included a CD with his 2003 Harry Bosch book Lost Light. In 2005, Pelecanos saw another novel published, Drama City. This book revisited the examination of dogfighting begun in his book Hell To Pay. Pelecanos is a dog owner and has written about his views of dogfighting. In 2006 he published The Night Gardener, which was a major change of style and which featured a cameo of himself. Pelecanos has also published short fiction in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including Measures of Poison and Usual Suspects. His reviews have been published in The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. The Turnaround was published in August 2008, reflecting a return to his roots, as the novel opens in the 70s in a Greek diner, and a continuation of his more modern style in the portion set in the present. The Turnaround won the 2008's Hammett Prize. In 2011, Pelecanos published 'The Cut', introducing the character Spero Lucas, a young veteran of the Iraq war. The former Marine works part-time as a private investigator for a D.C. defense attorney as well as taking jobs finding stolen items for a 40% cut of the value of the returned item. In 2013, Pelecanos published 'The Double', the second Spero Lucas book. Pelecanos has written and produced for HBO's The Wire and is part of a literary circle with The Wire creator David Simon and novelist Laura Lippman. Simon sought out Pelecanos after reading his work. Simon was recommended his novels several times but did not read his work initially because of territorial prejudice; Simon is from Baltimore. Once Simon received further recommendations, including one from Lippman, he tried The Sweet Forever and changed his mind. The two writers have much in common including a childhood in Silver Spring, Maryland, attendance at the University of Maryland and their interest in the 'fate of the American city and the black urban poor'. They first met at the funeral of a mutual friend shortly after Simon delivered the pilot episode. Simon pitched Pelecanos the idea of The Wire as a novel for television about the American city as Pelecanos drove him home. Pelecanos was excited about the prospect of writing something more than simple mystery for television as he strived to exceed the boundaries of genre in his novels. Pelecanos joined the crew as a writer for the first season in 2002. He wrote the teleplay for the seasons's penultimate episode 'Cleaning Up' from a story by Simon and Ed Burns. Pelecanos was promoted to producer for the second season in 2003. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Duck and Cover' and 'Bad Dreams' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. He remained a writer and producer for the third season in 2004. He wrote the teleplay for the episodes 'Hamsterdam' and 'Middle Ground' from stories he co-wrote with Simon. Simon wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Slapstick' from a story he co-wrote with Pelecanos. Simon and Pelecanos' collaboration on 'Middle Ground' received the show's first Emmy Award nomination, in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Pelecanos left the production staff of The Wire after the show's third season to concentrate on writing his novel The Night Gardener. His role as a producer was taken on by Eric Overmyer. Pelecanos remained a writer for the fourth season in 2006. He wrote the teleplay for the penultimate episode 'That's Got His Own' from a story he co-wrote with producer Ed Burns. Simon has commented that he missed having Pelecanos working on the show full-time but was a fan of The Night Gardener. Simon also spent time embedded with a homicide unit while researching his own book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Pelecanos and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Pelecanos returned as a writer for the series fifth and final season. He wrote the teleplay for the episode 'Late Editions' from a story he co-wrote with Simon. Pelecanos and the writing staff were again nominated for the WGA award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the fifth season but Mad Men won the award. Following the conclusion of The Wire Pelecanos joined the crew of the HBO World War II mini-series The Pacific as a co-producer and writer. After a lengthy production process the series aired in 2010. He co-wrote 'Part 3' of the series with fellow co-producer Michelle Ashford. The episode focused on Marines on leave in Australia and featured a displaced Greek family in a prominent guest role. Pelecanos saw the project as a chance to make a tribute to his father, Pete Pelecanos, who served as a Marine in the Philippines.Also in 2010 Pelecanos joined the crew of HBO New Orleans drama Treme as a writer. The series was created by Simon and Overmeyer. It follows the lives of residents of the Tremé neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. Pelecanos wrote the teleplay for the episode 'At the Foot of Canal Street' from a story he co-wrote with Overmyer. Pelecanos returned as a Consulting Producer and writer for the second season in 2011. He joined the crew full time as a writer and executive producer for the third season in 2012. He remained in this role for the fourth and final season in 2013. Following the conclusion of Treme Pelecanos worked with Overmyer on his next series Bosch. The series was developed by Overmyer and is based on the series of novels by Michael Connelly. The series stars The Wire alumni Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick. Pelecanos and Michael Connelly co-wrote the show's fourth episode 'Fugazi'. As of 2006, Pelecanos lives in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and three children.

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________