The Martini Shot

November 3, 2014
Edgar-finalist Pelecanos (Drama City) showcases his formidable skills in his first story collection. Among the standouts is the unforgettable “The Confidential Informant,” in which a Washington, D.C., man who lives in the shadow of his aging Vietnam vet father attempts to prove himself to the old man by helping the police “solve a homicide.” Fans of Pelecanos’s Spero Lucas series will welcome the emotionally charged “Chosen,” which fills in the back story of Lucas’s mixed-race family. In “The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us,” a raucous Depression-era story, a Greek immigrant gets mixed up with a corrupt Pinkerton agent. In the title novella, the life of Victor Ohanion—who, like Pelecanos, is a writer and producer for a cable TV crime show—begins to resemble his scripts after a set worker is murdered; Ohanion decides to settle the score. While these eight tales are not as deep as the author’s novels, the collection is still a winner. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM.

November 15, 2014
Seven stories and a novella from the undisputed king of D.C. noir.Pelecanos, who made his mark as a guide to the lower depths of the nation's capital and a writer/producer of the acclaimed TV series The Wire, has been as resourceful and inventive as his heroes, and this collection showcases his versatility. In the first and best of the stories, "The Confidential Informant," a street-wise kid's scheme to claim a $1,000 reward, set forth in scorching, slangy first-person, backfires fatally. "Chosen" chronicles the very mixed fortunes of an adoptive family whose youngest child is Spero Lucas (The Double, 2013, etc.). "String Music" toggles back and forth between Tonio Harris, who's struggling to survive against an enemy he impulsively insulted, and Sgt. Peters, who's struggling just as hard to protect him. "When You're Hungry" shows a kid who escaped an impoverished background to become a crack insurance investigator sent to Brazil, where an alleged murder victim has been sighted, that there's always somebody hungrier than him. A kid who's dealing acquiesces in his childhood friend's murder but still feels bad for the friend's mother in "Miss Mary's Room." The narrator of "Plastic Paddy" recalls the dangers and dead ends he encountered in smoking dope with a faux-Irish friend destined for a "long fall." In "The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us," a young man who works under Pelecanos regular Nick Stefanos avenges a friend who tried to organize his fellow hotel employees, then wonders whether another employee who saw him on the scene will turn him in. The only real disappointment is the title novella, in which a TV writer/producer who sounds a lot like the author tracks down the men who killed his gaffer, an amiable doper, and sets them up for condign justice. The other stories all strike sparks as reminiscences of troubled youth recalled from the perspective of adult experience-or from beyond the grave.

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October 1, 2014

The first story collection from the prolific Pelecanos (The Double) collects several previously published pieces and two new ones, including the title novella. Mining the author's own experience as a writer and producer on HBO's The Wire, "The Martini Shot" nearly collapses under the heavy industry jargon but emerges as a clever tale about television dramas and the nomadic people who create them. "Chosen," which first appeared as an ebook add-on to the first "Spero Lucas" novel (The Cut), touchingly fills in the blanks of the elusive private investigator's past as one of three adopted children of a Greek American couple. Most of the stories here appeared in various noir anthologies over the last two decades, when Pelecanos emerged as one of the country's most distinctive and reliable crime writers, and they showcase an author whose gritty prose style and sympathetic characterization have remained remarkably consistent in that time. VERDICT The best pieces in this collection do linger in memory ("Miss Mary's Room"), but many readers will view this title as a stopgap until the author's next full-length novel. A welcome but inessential addition to any public library's collection. [See Prepub Alert, 7/7/14.]--Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014
Pelecanos' experience as a TV writer and producer (The Wire, Treme) is put to good use in this collection's title novella, which takes place on the set of a cop show. The narrator, writer and producer Vic Ohanion, is drawn into the investigation of a murder when his friend, crew member Skylar, is killed, apparently the result of his side business, dealing marijuana to the rest of the crew. Pelecanos embeds plenty of insider film talk ( turnarounds, money shots, B-lines, etc.) in the story, but the jargon actually helps build the ambience of life on a film seta circus world of skilled itinerant workers who do what they do until the tents are folded, and they move down the road. The murder of one of them shakes the low-key camaraderie of the crew, prompting Vic to see if writing about cops translates to acting like one in the real world. It's a fine story and, not incidentally, would make a terrific movie about the movies. The rest of the collection, comprising stories originally published in various crime anthologies, all display Pelecanos' rare gift for street-smart dialogue. Longtime fans will be pleased to find appearances by several characters, Spero Lucas, in particular, familiar from Pelecanos' novels. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pelecanos' first story collection may not draw quite the sales of his novels, but dedicated fans won't want to miss anything with his name on it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

March 23, 2015
For this collection of seven short stories and one novella, reader Graham exhibits
a chameleon-like dexterity in performing Pelecanos’s full-bodied characters, men approaching a turning point in their lives. “String Music” has Graham portraying a slang-slinging teenage narrator, a basketballer who experiences the dark side of sports. In two of the stories, Graham employs various degrees of a Greek accent: “Chosen” introduces us to the adoptive parents of Pelecanos’s series hero, Spero Lucas, and “The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us,” set in 1933 and narrated by a Greek immigrant, is a bloody tale of vengeance. Pelecanos leaves the D.C. setting used in much for his work for “When You’re Hungry,” a grim tale about an insurance investigator whose search for a scam artist takes him to Brazil, giving Graham a chance to show off his Portuguese accent. No accent is needed for “The Martini Shot,” but there’s a touch of forced jauntiness as Victor, a television writer on location near New Orleans, narrates a moody tale of passionate romance and his investigation of a crew-member’s murder. A Little, Brown hardcover.