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The Big Blowdown
''The Big Blowdown'' is a 1996 crime novel written by George Pelecanos. It is set in Washington, D.C. and focuses on Peter Karras. It is the first of four books comprising the D.C. Quartet. The other books in this series are '' King Suckerman'', ''The Sweet Forever'' and ''Shame the Devil''. Plot introduction In 1940s Washington, Pete Karras is betrayed by his friend Joe Recevo and disabled by his former employer Mr. Burke. Karras takes up a job in Nick Stefanos' diner but when Burke's protection racket threatens Stefanos, Karras resists and ultimately gets his revenge. Explanation of the novel's title The title comes from something Vera Gardner says to Pete Karras in Chapter 30, describing the destructive power of an atomic blast: "...And then there was a flash, and the town was just gone. Like a big wind had flattened it all out, blown it all away. Like a big blowdown, Pete." Characters Peter Karras, Jimmy Boyle, Joe Recevo, and Perry Angelos are four friends who grew up toge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Pelecanos
George P. Pelecanos (born February 18, 1957) is an American author. Many of his 20 books are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. On television, he frequently collaborates with David Simon, writing multiple episodes of Simon's HBO series ''The Wire'' and '' Treme'', and is also the co-creator (with Simon) of the HBO series '' The Deuce'' and ''We Own This City''. Early life Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Career Novelist Pelecanos acknowledged that Elmore Leonard was a prime influence on him as an author. In addition to Leonard, he cited the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and John le Carré for getting him hooked on crime fiction. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private inve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Novel
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. History The ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'') contains the earliest known examples of crime fiction. One example of a story of this genre is the medieval Arabic tale of "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the ''Arabia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington, D
Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on Washington, D.C. * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States Washington may also refer to: Places England * Washington, Tyne and Wear, a town in the City of Sunderland metropolitan borough ** Washington Old Hall, ancestral home of the family of George Washington * Washington, West Sussex, a village and civil parish Greenland * Cape Washington, Greenland * Washington Land Philippines *New Washington, Aklan, a municipality *Washington, a barangay in Catarman, Northern Samar *Washington, a barangay in Escalante, Negros Occidental *Washington, a barangay in San Jacinto, Masbate *Washington, a barangay in Surigao City United States * Washington, Wisconsin (other) * Fort Washington (other) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Suckerman
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the title may refer to tribal kingship. Germanic kingship is cognate with Indo-European traditions of tribal rulership (c.f. Indic ''rājan'', Gothic ''reiks'', and Old Irish ''rí'', etc.). *In the context of classical antiquity, king may translate in Latin as '' rex'' and in Greek as '' archon'' or '' basileus''. *In classical European feudalism, the title of ''king'' as the ruler of a ''kingdom'' is understood to be the highest rank in the feudal order, potentially subject, at least nominally, only to an emperor (harking back to the client kings of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire). *In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of ''king'' is us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sweet Forever
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shame The Devil
''Shame the Devil'' is a 1999 crime novel written by George Pelecanos. It is set in Washington DC and focuses on a botched robbery and its consequences. It is the last of four books comprising the D.C. Quartet. The other books in this series are ''The Big Blowdown'', ''King Suckerman'', and ''The Sweet Forever''. The book was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. Plot introduction Two ruthless killers head into a pizza place to rob the joint while one of the men's brother waits in the car. The robbery goes wrong and the men kill the restaurant's employees. The robber in the getaway car is killed by a cop and the robbers hit a little boy in their escape. The novel jumps forward two and a half years and introduces the character of Dimitri Karras, the father of the young boy. He attends grief counseling sessions with the family members of those who were killed that day. Karras begins to get used to living again when his friend, Nick Stefanos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nick Stefanos
George P. Pelecanos (born February 18, 1957) is an American author. Many of his 20 books are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. On television, he frequently collaborates with David Simon, writing multiple episodes of Simon's HBO series ''The Wire'' and '' Treme'', and is also the co-creator (with Simon) of the HBO series '' The Deuce'' and '' We Own This City''. Early life Pelecanos, a Greek American, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Career Novelist Pelecanos acknowledged that Elmore Leonard was a prime influence on him as an author. In addition to Leonard, he cited the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and John le Carré for getting him hooked on crime fiction. Pelecanos's early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels ''The Black Dahlia'' (1987), ''The Big Nowhere'' (1988), ''L.A. Confidential'' (1990), ''White Jazz'' (1992), ''American Tabloid'' (1995), ''The Cold Six Thousand'' (2001), and ''Blood's a Rover'' (2009). Life Early life Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to El Monte, California. At the age of 7, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Bunker
Edward Heward Bunker (December 31, 1933 – July 19, 2005) was an American author of crime fiction, a screenwriter, convicted felon and an actor. He wrote numerous books, some of which have been adapted into films. He wrote the scripts for—and acted in—''Straight Time'' (1978) (adapted from his debut novel ''No Beast So Fierce''), ''Runaway Train'' (1985) and ''Animal Factory'' (2000) (adapted from his sophomore novel of the same name). He also played a minor role in ''Reservoir Dogs'' (1992). He began running away from home when he was five years old, and developed a pattern of criminal behaviour, earning his first conviction when he was fourteen, leading to a cycle of incarceration, parole, re-offending and further jail time. He was convicted of bank robbery, drug dealing, extortion, armed robbery, and forgery. Bunker was released from prison for the last time in 1975, after which he focused on his career as a writer and actor. Early life 1930s—1940s Bunker was born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By George Pelecanos
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1996 American Novels
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people 1996 Mount Everest disaster, die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly (sheep), Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur massacre (Australia), Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Gun laws of Australia, Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was Aircraft hijacking, hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Gam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In Washington, D
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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