From the Emmy and Edgar award-winning detective fiction writer, a thriller about an ex-offender who must choose between the man who got him out of jail and the librarian who showed him another path on the inside.
Among Pelecanos’s gifts as a storyteller is that he understands the appeal of moral ambiguity and authentically flawed characters. That skill is on full display here. So is his sense of humor ... In many ways, The Man Who Came Uptown is a book about books ... So while much of this story is classic crime noir...I found myself also reading the book for the Proustian madeleines that Pelecanos serves us.
Like his hero Elmore Leonard, Pelecanos finds the humanity in the lowest of lowlifes (the garrulous Ornazian is so proud of his wife, he thinks nothing of showing nude photos of her to friends). And Pelecanos' peppery dialogue energizes every page. As a bonus, the book offers an ongoing 'read list' of the author's favorites ... Picturing them on Michael's new bookshelf, you can't help but smile.
...a stand-alone work that cinematically unfolds in equal parts beauty and violence ... There are a number of quiet twists and turns that play out all the way to the book’s satisfying, somewhat bittersweet ending ... The Man Who Came Uptown may or may not become your favorite Pelecanos novel. What is undeniable is that it contains some of his best writing to date in any media.
