The Sweet Forever

The Sweet Forever is a well done and engrossing crime novel. Pelecanos' story shifts from the Washington DC gang members to the corrupt cops to honest people just trying to get by and back again. It's not really about one crime, like a murder that must be solved. Rather it concerns a chain reaction of events which occur after a bag of drug money is taken from a flaming car. The characters are real and will stay with you after you put the novel down. The resolution is satisfying--nothing canned or predictible here. The Sweet Forever is an enjoyable, engrossing read.

This is a flat out terrific book. Pelecanos weaves an intriguing story about a search for some stolen drug money, a battle for control of a neighborhood and a number of characters looking for a different direction for their lives. The scene descriptions are vivid and the character development is superb. Exactly what else would you be looking for in a crime novel?As a confirmed Pelecanos fan now after reading several of his books, I'd recommend a couple of things to anyone considering reading his work. First, if you like tough, gritty crime novels, definitely read his work. It is excellent. Second, I think you're better off by reading the old stuff before the newer work. The reason for this is that a number of the characters appear in multiple books and if you know a character will show up in a later work as an older person, you know they didn't get killed in the earlier work.

The author manages to juggle a great story with a sizable group of interesting characters. The flaws of the heroes sometimes make them hard to distinguish from the villians. Some characters are both.You never know which direction the players are going to turn in and that keeps you interested to the last.

So many books get five-star reviews. Then one like The Sweet Forever comes along and I want to go back and downgrade everything else. Pelecanos' characters come alive. The plot whips around like real life. And the action pops. What a book. This guy just gets better and better.

If you haven't read George P. Pelecanos, you're missing one hell of an experience! This is easily his best book and that's saying alot, since he's yet to make a misstep with any of his crime/detective novels. _The Sweet Forever_ is a beautifully- done book (one of the jacket blurbs likens it to a crime-thriller version of _Bonfire of the Vanities_, a particularly apt comparison, I think). It is the second book to feature the team of Dimitri Karras/Marcus Clay (first introduced in _King Suckerman_), two old friends now running a chain of D.C.-based record stores. The book is set in 1986, when cocaine was at its peak of popularity and just before the advent of crack. The streets of Washington D. C. are growing ever more dangerous and the town continues to dwindle and wither away, ignored by a corrupt, drug-using mayor and his regime. Dimitri and Marcus run afoul of a gang of cocaine runners in the neighborhood of Marcus' new store,located in a particularly run-down part of the city. He's trying to put something back into the community, so he's willing to put up with slow sales. But when the gang members start pushing around young kids in the area, Marcus gets involved, almost against his better judgement. One of the neat things about the book is that Dimitri himself is hooked on cocaine and his habit is dragging him down further and further, only he himself is not aware of this yet. The novel gets only that much more morally complex when one of the two leads is involved, however slightly, in the very drug trade that is ruining the city and which the characters must battle with. There are so many great scenes here and great characters. Marcus has a huge heart and is willing to go out on the line for people that some might ignore or turn their backs on. Add in a corrupt cop whose conscience keeps digging at him and a drug runner who isn't sure about what he's doing, and you've got one memorable mixture. I'm a sucker for emotional movies, I'll admit. Play my heartstrings and I get a lump in my throat just like that. But I very seldom, if ever, have the same response to the written word. When reading this book, however, I had more "throat-lump" moments than I could keep track of. This is very highly recommended and a perfect example of how the lowly "crime thriller" can operate far outside the boundaries of its genre. This is literature, folks!