by George Pelecanos
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| List Price: | $24.99 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $7.98 |
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Product Description
The haunting story of three copsone good, one bad, one brokenand the murder that reunites them in a showdown decades in the making. Gus Ramone is good police, a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the citys Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa, whose body has been found in a community garden. The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop 20 years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan Doc Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T.C. Cook. The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the Night Gardener killings. The new case draws the three men together, re-igniting the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them, and old ghosts walk once more as they try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Decent Book, 2008-10-11
Hmmm. I mildly enjoyed this book. It is what it is. An easy read crime story. But then I do wonder what the hype is about. The book is clearly writen but with no particular style or grace. It does delve into the same gritty urban territory as The Wire, but with only a fraction of the insight. Much of the writing is unfortunately ridden with mediocre crime novel cliches. And although I enjoyed it, I finished the book with the familiar feeling that I have when puting down 90% of crime fiction- undernourished - somewhat equivilent to having eaten a bag of potato chips.
Pelecanos is no Chandler, nor is he Ross Macdonald.
So why the hype? Why the desire to make the book more than it is? Perhaps it is to lend more status to the seemingly senseless suffering and hopelessness of many of the lives it depicts? If you are looking for writing that really does accomplish that and covers the same geography, I suggest Lost in the City or All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Outstanding thriller, 2008-09-08
I'm a big fan of the police procedural/thriller genre when it comes to TV and movies--frequently getting sucked into reruns of "Law & Order: SVU" when I should be doing other things--but for some reason I haven't read many books like this. Maybe it's time to change that.
As the story begins, it's 1985 and a middle-aged cop named T.C. Cooke is examining a string of "Palindrome murders" in which three kids--all with names spelled the same backwards and forwards--have been killed and dumped in community gardens around Washington D.C. Also on the scene are two fresh-faced officers just out of the academy, Gus Ramone and Don Holiday.
Cut to 20 years later. Ramone is a respected police veteran and family man, Holiday a hard-drinking womanizer who resigned from the force under investigation, Cooke a retiree suffering the effects of a stroke. All three are still haunted by the unsolved Palindrome murders. And when Ramone's son's friend Asa is found dead in a community garden, all three are drawn into the case.
"The Night Gardener" succeeds on many levels, which is a credit to Pelecanos' sharp writing. He does an excellent job of fleshing out the lead characters, as well as some colorful secondary roles. The mystery itself is exciting to watch unfold, with many unexpected twists and turns along the way. And the ending manages to surprise but still remain satisfactory.
The book also has some interesting social commentary and insights into police work that give it more depth than the average page-turner. There's a great spiel from Ramone near the end of the book about what it really means to "solve" a crime. If you're looking for a top-notch thriller, I highly recommend "The Night Gardener."
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great book, should be a movie, 2008-09-04
Picked this one up as George P had been recommended as a "Washington DC Author" and I was visiting on vaction. Chose this one as it had a contemporary setting.
I wasnt not disapointed as this is a great book. The plot cracks along, the characters are really good and ROUNDED, you felt they were real people rather than cut out "goodies" and "baddies". There wasnt the sometimes pointless traveling and descriptions you get in some thrillers and the whole thing has a delicious sense of ambiguity. I wasnt surprised to see George has been a co-writter on The Wire TV series.
For background, and in no way a spoiler, the killings are apparently loosely are based on the still unsolved "Freeway Phantom" killings of the early '70s.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A gripping crime drama and intimate look at a City and its people, 2008-08-12
Mr. Pelecanos has just found himself a new fan because from the very first page of The Night Gardener, he spins a heart-breaking, multi-faceted tale that is simply too hard to resist.
Ostensibly, this is a crime drama. A serial killer with an appreciation for constrained writing is tormenting the residents and law enforcement officials of Southeast DC. Dead teenagers are popping up in neighborhood gardens and their names are spelled the same forwards and backwards -- these are the Palindrome murders of the infamous "night gardner."
Okay, the whole palindrome thing gets threadbare fairly quickly but the story compensates by moving boldy beyond the constraints of hardboiled crime fiction and into a richer and more meaningful exploration of a city and people in conflict, and a dualism that seems to serve up equal helpings of salvation and damnation on the same plate.
Here is a tale set in the Capital of world power, Washington, DC. A city with a glorious veneer and a rotting urban center where people live lives of not so quiet desperation. And it is in his description of DC and its environs that this novel draws much of its power. It is simply drenched in authenticity, the mark of a caring local who has a soft spot for the people and places he writes about. Yes, this is fiction, but told with such bona fides that the reader may half expect to be able to walk into Leo's and have a drink with the notorious womanizer and ex-cop Doc Holiday.
And then there's the dialogue and the characters themselves. Mr. Pelacanos clearly has a way with the lingo of the streets and the police that survey them. He's obviously an adroit student of street culture and portrays them it with convincing force. Not once does he strike anything resembling a false note. All dialogue is sharp and well-crafted and often riotously funny.
It is in such fashion that we get to meet the detectives of the Violent Crime Branch of DC's Metropolitan Police Department. Mr. Pelecano produces an intimate look into the lives of inner-city youths, parents and their children, husbands and wives, criminals and, of course, law enforcement professionals coping with the often unbearable pressures of their work, some with more grace than others
In the end, The Night Gardener is less an exploration of crime than it is an exploration of the human soul told in cool and detached style that belies a soft and warm core.
It is an examination of time and place. A look at human beings doing the best they can with the circumstances they've been dealt. Sure, there are elements of mystery and good old fashioned whodunit, but this book is not about a serial killer at all, it's about making choices and living with the consequences of those choices. Happy and sad.
Reader beware, Mr. Pelecanos sucks you into his world, and forces you to think in ways that no other crime novel ever has.
Like I said, he's got an enthusiastic new fan.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Overhyped Novel, Far From Transcending Genre, 2008-08-12
Ken Bruen says in a blurb on the back of the book that nothing in mystery touches The Night Gardener, that this is what other writers try to achieve, and that this novel puts to rest the question of mystery as Literature.
Really? If so, it's no wonder crime fiction is mired in mediocrity. The bar is set too low.
The Night Gardener is an average book at best. There's no real conflict; nothing is at stake for the main characters. Ramone, the protagonist, is supposed to be a guy who goes by the book all the time, yet he NEVER goes by the book throughout the whole story. He even does something that would and should get him fired and put in jail if it were found out.
The commentary at racial and sexual prejudice is shallow. Pelecanos shows us what racial prejudice looks like, and that it exists, but he goes no farther. It's a very black and white view of an important issue in our society, yet Pelecanos never asks why or how such an issue persists, or what can be done about it.
If this book is an attempt at transcending genre, then it is a failed attempt. I'm sure there are many crime novels which do cross the barrier over into Literature, but The Night Gardener is not one of them.
The novel is not boring, but it's ultimately forgettable.
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