Hard Revolution (Derek Strange & Terry Quinn Series #4) » (Abridged)

A devotee of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, George P. Pelecanos has honed his street-smart style with a series of detective thrillers all set in the seamier corners of the D.C./Maryland/Virginia triangle.

With HARD REVOLUTION, George Pelecanos delivers the knockout punch his admirers have long awaited. Here is the rich, dramatic, and totally engrossing story of two brothers—one a rookie police officer, the other a recently returned Vietnam veteran—who come to blows in the year 1968, when DC exploded into chaos and violence. HARD REVOLUTION tells for the first time how Derek Strange first became a police officer, and what drove him to leave the force and become a private investigator. Filled with the rich details of time, place, music, and local color that are Pelecanos's trademark, and with unerring insight into the morality of daily life, HARD REVOLUTION is a gripping, modern Cane and Abel tale set against the backdrop of a nation at war with itself.

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Pelecanos's foray into Strange's past does not in the end diminish, but rather adds to, our sense of his complexity and humanity. In narrating Derek's buried crime story, Pelecanos has further tapped into an archetypal vein of family experience in the black community since the 1950's, as drugs, murder and prison cut a swath through three generations of young men. But he never loses his delicate, personal touch: close to the novel's end, the adult Derek chooses to sleep once more in his older brother's bed, finding some solace in the last remnants of his scent and presence there. — Anthony Walton