The Cut

George Pelecanos is back with The Cut, a tight, yet not really satisfying urban thriller about an Iraq vet trying to make a living by "finding things" for unsavory characters and ending up delivering justice. The main character, Spero Lucas, is, I think, a reflection of what the author - on some level - would like to be, or at least admires: a former Marine who, when not retrieving other people's property, spends his days working out, hanging out in his bachelor pad, having sex with unaccountably willing young women, and riding his bike around DC. I understand that the local color is supposed to be part of what Pelecanos does best, but I was irked by numerous passages such as this one:

"He drove out to Hyattsville, Maryland, via Queens Chapel Road and Hamilton Street, and stopped in the lot of the 38th Street Park, through which ran the paved Northwest Branch trail. He got onto his bike and pedaled southeast...across Rhode Island Avenue, and finally across Alternate Route One, navigating through fast vehicular traffic. He dipped down onto Tanglewood Drive, entered the industrial district of Edmondston, and cruised at a steady pace."

Oh, please. There is only so much literary GPS a reader can take. If you are not from D.C., all this means nothing to you. And there are only so many crime-fighting Greeks you can pack into the nation's capital. After a while, all the malakas, kota me manestras, peeshenaws, and entaxis get to be a bit cloying. And now that I'm on it, while he does try to inject some moral or other kind ambivalence into the book (Lucas ends his adventures craving a beer, reflecting, I guess, his unresolved veteran-related problems), somehow all the good guys are good looking, clean, and smart, and the bad guys are ugly, stupid, bad dressers, and have bad hygiene.

I was not a fan of this book.