Soul Circus: Summary and book reviews of Soul Circus by George Pelecanos, plus links to an excerpt from Soul Circus and a biography of George Pelecanos.
Soul Circus
by George Pelecanos
Hardcover: Mar 2003,
336 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2004,
416 pages.
A Washington, D.C., crime overlord is fighting for his life in court. Two younger dealers are fighting for his territory, prestige, and millions of dollars in future profits. It takes only one slip—a kid going out of control with a rented pistol—to push friction closer to wholesale slaughter. In the midst of this extraordinary tension, private investigator Derek Strange has found a woman whose testimony could mean death or freedom for the crime lord. He wants her to talk—but first he'll have to find a way to keep her alive.
Amazon.com - J. Kingston Pierce Soul Circus delivers an un-blindered perspective on urban life (and death) that manages to be both frightening and hopeful. Not so unlike the city in which it's set.
Book Magazine - Chris Barsanti
Crime is rampant on the streets of Washington, D.C., but Derek Strange knows there's not much he cando about it. Unlike too many fictional private eyes, Pelecanos' protagonist isn't a crusader or some burnt-out cynic. This wonderfully odd thriller finds Strange spending more time arguing politics with his white partner, Terry Quinn, than he does brow-beating informants.
The Washington Post - Maureen Corrigan
What's so brilliant about Soul Circus, and Pelecanos's novels in general, is that he raises these questions not only in meditative passages (such as when Strange wonders how he ever lucked into the joys of a good marriage and fatherhood) but also in scenes of the rawest violence. In the space of a couple of paragraphs toward the middle of the novel, four gang members suddenly die in bloody, balletic sequence, and you find yourself reeling from the senselessness of their deaths, the waste of their stupid lives. Ditto for the ending of this superb novel, which shoves readers into an unwanted audience with the awful silence at the center of things.
USA Today - Carol Memmott
Readers of this series don't get a free ride. It's uncomfortable having a front-row view of hate, hopelessness and drugs. It's tough delving into the lives and psyches of gun dealers, drug sellers and users, gang members and a population that has never known anything but low self-esteem. And with every book, Pelecanos takes his descriptive powers to a higher level of brilliance. Scenes of violence are re-read for the beauty of the language and the cinematic quality that pushes readers to envision urban evil in all its forms.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
Like the novels of Richard Price ... Soul Circus is both tragedy and thriller, especially as it describes the all but accidental casualties of urban warfare. ... Mr. Pelecanos continues to display a sharp eye for detail and a terrific ear for street dialogue. ... And once again he will leave readers eagerly awaiting his next move.
San Francisco Chronicle
The big boys-Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly and James Ellroy-have some new, lean company in their crime writers' club Washington, D.C., denizen George P. Pelecanos.
Publishers Weekly
This is vintage Pelecanos, with characters to remember, dialogue that rocks, an unsentimental, kinetic tableau of the D.C. underworld and, most of all, a conscience.
Booklist - Bill Ott
Starred Review ...one more superb installment in what has become a remarkably revealing portrait of urban life, encompassing both the broad sociopolitical questions and the most intimate matters of heart and mind.
Kirkus Reviews
The bleak, powerful fadeout reserves resolution mostly for the dead; the living will clearly have to take their chances in whatever blistering sequel their talented creator has planned.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by David Liberal Guilt Trip to the SOUL CIRCUS While this is a good story and written fairly well, the book's impact is really weakened by its constant moralizing, both in character dialogue and in author editorializing. In the author's stereotypical view, all of DC's street crime, corruption... Read More
Rated of 5
by jpj
Soul Circus is very DC. At least a certain part of DC. I found myself almost turning to a city map to follow along with the action. The action is inner city drama of bad people doing bad things and good people trying to get out, but always... Read More
The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane.
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