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Book log 2018 #15 - Hell To Pay
Jul. 5th, 2018 02:36 pm15) HELL TO PAY by George P Pelecanos
Hm, bit of a mixture. Good characters, flows well, but the plot advertised actually starts more than halfway through the book, and prior to that it really feels like the middle-section of a larger book, or an episode in an ongoing TV series arc (which isn't surprising, as Pelecanos is one of the people behind The Wire, The Pacific, and The Deuce). I suspect it would have played better as a TV show – and in fact there's one with these characters due in the coming year, which I suspect I'll prefer. Other niggles would be that there are couple of obvious lectures to the audience, and I swear if you took out the specifying of which music tracks are being listened to in any given scene, you'd reduce the page count by at least a quarter. Throw in the (American) Football plays and it'd be a third. I'm also a bit unsure how accurate it is representing the everyday black life and slang (of 2002 in Washington), since it's focussed on that while written by a white guy – it feels like The Wire, is all I can say, really.
So, good two-thirds of the time, and I look forward to a TV show with these characters, but somehow left me wanting.
Hm, bit of a mixture. Good characters, flows well, but the plot advertised actually starts more than halfway through the book, and prior to that it really feels like the middle-section of a larger book, or an episode in an ongoing TV series arc (which isn't surprising, as Pelecanos is one of the people behind The Wire, The Pacific, and The Deuce). I suspect it would have played better as a TV show – and in fact there's one with these characters due in the coming year, which I suspect I'll prefer. Other niggles would be that there are couple of obvious lectures to the audience, and I swear if you took out the specifying of which music tracks are being listened to in any given scene, you'd reduce the page count by at least a quarter. Throw in the (American) Football plays and it'd be a third. I'm also a bit unsure how accurate it is representing the everyday black life and slang (of 2002 in Washington), since it's focussed on that while written by a white guy – it feels like The Wire, is all I can say, really.
So, good two-thirds of the time, and I look forward to a TV show with these characters, but somehow left me wanting.
