1. Right As Rain (2001)
Derek Strange and Terry Quinn are ex cops turned private detectives in Washington, DC. Hired to investigate the death of an off duty black police officer at the hands of a white policeman, Strange and Quinn are faced with the institutionalised racism of the nation's most poorly trained and dangerous police force. As the two private detectives confront the degradation of the city's flourishing drug trade, they find themselves up against some of the most implacable, dead eyed killers ever to grace the pages of a novel. In Right As Rain George Pelecanos introduces a memorable new pair of characters into the grittily real Washington DC landscape which has led to him being acclaimed as 'A great writer' (The Times) who 'deserves to be listed among the best' (Observer).
2. Hell To Pay (2002)
Set in darkest, downtown Washington, Hell to Pay begins with Quinn and Strange dealing with the usual detritus of the world's most violent city a bent cop and a missing teenage girl turned hooker but then a senseless death on a sunny afternoon shakes even Derek Strange's existence. A victim shot down by bullets meant for another; a tragic accident that strikes just too close to home. Strange's grief is all consuming and he swears to track down and destroy the killers ghetto style. But as he throws himself deeper and deeper into the hunt, he has to ask questions of himself and his world that he would rather not.
3. Soul Circus (2003)
Just another day in downtown Washington DC? Private Investigator Derek Strange and his partner, Terry Quinn, are running a PI business in the seedy underbelly of Washington DC. Strange and Quinn are approached by a young man asking them to find his girlfriend who has gone missing. And so Strange and Quinn find her. Just another day? Not quite. In the grimy underworld inhabited by Strange, nothing is that simple. For Strange and Quinn's efforts have led to a young mother being brutally murdered a devastating discovery that causes them both to question the morality by which they live. And yet at the same time they need to continue the search for another missing girl, a teenage runaway who shows up in a porn video. And who hasn't been seen since. Bleak, gritty and moving, it superbly brings to life the devastating story of life and death in Washington's black ghettoes.
4. Hard Revolution (2004)
HARD REVOLUTION is a rich, dramatic, totally engrossing story of two brothers--one a rookie police officer, one a recently returned Vietnam veteran--caught up in the chaos that engulfed D.C. in 1968, when riots followed the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Derek Strange is his family's straight arrow, but his older brother Dennis has always had a harder time. Home from the war and in several varieties of trouble, Dennis is in danger of making one bad decision too many. While Derek tries to be there for Dennis, no amount of brotherly love can save Dennis from Alvin Jones, a local drug dealer who draws him into his web. An apocalyptic gun battle and an impossible decision collide in the electrifying climax of the most powerful book yet from George Pelecanos, a novelist who "writes with intelligence and complexity, as well as with a sober recognition of the evil at large in the world." (Washington Post)