Antisocial Series

The boys are back in town

Frank Farrow is a natural-born killer. Roman Otis is a fine-looking crooner who does his killing on the side. On a hot D.C. afternoon Frank and Roman hit a pizza shop called May’s. When the hit was over, four people were executed. A cop was shot. A boy was dead. And when the sirens stopped wailing and the killers vanished into the heat, dozens of lives were shattered forever.

Now it’s three years later, and Dimitri Karras, who lost a son, is starting to live again. But Dimitri’s old acquaintance, a P.I. named Nick Stefanos, has just unburied the past–by discovering the killers’ identity. Suddenly the second act of a crime story is about to be told. Because the May’s pizza parlor killers are coming back into town: where they’ll be greeted with open arms, broken hearts, and at least one loaded gun.

The time is 1976.  Captain Beefheart’s on the eight-track.  The hot new superfly flick King Suckerman is coming to neighborhood theaters.  And Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of drugs and racial tension–an easy place to turn a wrong corner and land in a whole lot of trouble.  

That’s what happens to Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras when they cross paths with an ex-con and his gang of natural born killers.  Walking into a drug deal gone south, Clay and Karras end up with a pile of money that isn’t theirs…the sexy teenage girlfriend of the Italian dealer…and major trouble.  The ex-con is soon spilling blood to get to the cash.  The dealer is scheming to get his girl back.  And two knockaround guys named Clay and Karras are reaching a pivotal moment–the time to take a stand, go straight, and get justice.  Or maybe just sweet revenge.

In this sizzling thriller, George Pelecanos writes with a firecracker in his prose, shooting sparks on every page and earning his place among the stars of crime fiction.