George Pelecanos may be best known for his television work on ‘The Wire’, ‘Treme’ and ‘We Own This City’ but his Nick Stefanos novels repay investigating.
Stefanos was a punk in his youth, addicted to speed and metal music, became an advertising executive for an electronics store, then became a barman, quietly taking a path towards alcohol addiction and the low life. But he has a talent of sorts for digging up the truth, and so gets enlisted as a private eye by people in the Washington DC Greek community.
Pelecanos has a particular skill with language and his use of Greek or Black idioms never feels false or unrealistic. Equally, he is able to handle the atmosphere of violence that pervades daily life in the city.
Stefanos is another detective scarred by alcohol, but his story goes beyond the expected clichés of bad women and bad booze.Check him out.
