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D.C. Quartet #1
The Big Blowdown
For Joey and Pete, the easiest work to find after the War is providing muscle for a local mobster. But Pete is soft on his fellow immigrants, and the mob responds by breaking his knees. Three years later, Karras is slinging hash for big Nick Stefanos when the Mob decides Nick's grill needs protection. Now Pete and Joey are facing off, about to learn what friendship means--and what it costs.
313 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1996
18 people are currently reading
3219 people want to read
About the author
George P. Pelecanos
59 books1,627 followersGeorge Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C., in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman's shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992.
Pelecanos is the author of eighteen novels set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, The Turnaround, The Way Home, The Cut, and What It Was. He has been the recipient of the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix du Roman Noir in France. Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, and the collections Unusual Suspects, Best American Mystery Stories of 1997, Measures of Poison, Best American Mystery Stories of 2002, Men from Boys, and Murder at the Foul Line. He served as editor on the collections D.C. Noir and D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, as well as The Best Mystery Stories of 2008. He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Sight and Sound, Uncut, Mojo, and numerous other publications. Esquire called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world." In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." Pelecanos would like to note that Mr. King used the qualifier "perhaps."
Pelecanos served as producer on the feature films Caught (Robert M. Young, 1996), Whatever, (Susan Skoog, 1998) and BlackMale (George and Mike Baluzy, 1999), and was the U.S. distributor of John Woo's cult classic, The Killer and Richard Bugajski's Interrogation. Most recently, he was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award and the AFI Award. He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show. He was a writer and co-producer on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, and is currently at work as an executive producer and writer on David Simon's HBO dramatic series Treme, shot in New Orleans.
Pelecanos lives with his family in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Pelecanos is the author of eighteen novels set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, The Turnaround, The Way Home, The Cut, and What It Was. He has been the recipient of the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix du Roman Noir in France. Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, and the collections Unusual Suspects, Best American Mystery Stories of 1997, Measures of Poison, Best American Mystery Stories of 2002, Men from Boys, and Murder at the Foul Line. He served as editor on the collections D.C. Noir and D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, as well as The Best Mystery Stories of 2008. He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Sight and Sound, Uncut, Mojo, and numerous other publications. Esquire called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world." In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." Pelecanos would like to note that Mr. King used the qualifier "perhaps."
Pelecanos served as producer on the feature films Caught (Robert M. Young, 1996), Whatever, (Susan Skoog, 1998) and BlackMale (George and Mike Baluzy, 1999), and was the U.S. distributor of John Woo's cult classic, The Killer and Richard Bugajski's Interrogation. Most recently, he was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award and the AFI Award. He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show. He was a writer and co-producer on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, and is currently at work as an executive producer and writer on David Simon's HBO dramatic series Treme, shot in New Orleans.
Pelecanos lives with his family in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
November 30, 2022
DC Quartet, book No. 1: The first DC Quartet book starts in the 1930s and ends in the 1950s chronicling the early lives of Stephanos, Costa, Karras etc.
This is yet another wonderful piece of Pelecanos' amazingly detailed and gripping historically accurate reality of immigrant lives on, and sometimes over, the edge of criminality in Washington DC, focussing mainly on the American Greek community. This is a pretty good read! 8 out of 12. The Greek themed storylines in The Wire: A Dramatic Series for HBO were obviously influenced by having George Pelecanos on the writing team.
2012 read
This is yet another wonderful piece of Pelecanos' amazingly detailed and gripping historically accurate reality of immigrant lives on, and sometimes over, the edge of criminality in Washington DC, focussing mainly on the American Greek community. This is a pretty good read! 8 out of 12. The Greek themed storylines in The Wire: A Dramatic Series for HBO were obviously influenced by having George Pelecanos on the writing team.
2012 read
May 9, 2013
Joe Recevo and Pete Karras were friends since they were kids, until their boss decided he didn't like Pete and had him badly beaten, giving him a crippling knee injury. Three years later, their lives will soon intersect when their old boss decides he wants Nick Stefanos, Karras' employer at a diner, to start paying him protection. Who will be left standing after the Big Blowdown?
Here we are. Another great book by George Pelecanos, the first in his DC Quartet. In the Big Blowdown, Pelecanos paints a picture of life in DC, with two vets, Karras and Recevo, as the main characters, taking them from their teens to their thirties. As with Pelecanos' other books, the Washington DC setting is a character unto itself.
The crime elements in this one aren't as pronounced as in the previous three Pelecanos book I've read, the Nick Stefanos trilogy, Nick being the grandson of the Nick in this book. The crime elements stick to the sidelines for most of the book, namely Florek looking for his missing sister and the hooker murders. Everything comes together at the end, just in time for the Big Blowdown.
Much like Nick Stefanos in his trilogy, Pete Karras is a conflicted character, not really sure how to act with his family. Or his mistress, for that matter. I think it's partly because of his experiences in World War II and partly from his upbringing. It sure goes a long way toward explaining why Dimitri Karras acts the way he does in King Suckerman, the next book in the DC Quartet.
Reading this right after reading the Stefanos trilogy, it's amazing to see what direction Pelecanos' writing was going, from a hardboiled style to a more literary one.
Four stars. I will continue to preach the Pelecanos Gospel.
Here we are. Another great book by George Pelecanos, the first in his DC Quartet. In the Big Blowdown, Pelecanos paints a picture of life in DC, with two vets, Karras and Recevo, as the main characters, taking them from their teens to their thirties. As with Pelecanos' other books, the Washington DC setting is a character unto itself.
The crime elements in this one aren't as pronounced as in the previous three Pelecanos book I've read, the Nick Stefanos trilogy, Nick being the grandson of the Nick in this book. The crime elements stick to the sidelines for most of the book, namely Florek looking for his missing sister and the hooker murders. Everything comes together at the end, just in time for the Big Blowdown.
Much like Nick Stefanos in his trilogy, Pete Karras is a conflicted character, not really sure how to act with his family. Or his mistress, for that matter. I think it's partly because of his experiences in World War II and partly from his upbringing. It sure goes a long way toward explaining why Dimitri Karras acts the way he does in King Suckerman, the next book in the DC Quartet.
Reading this right after reading the Stefanos trilogy, it's amazing to see what direction Pelecanos' writing was going, from a hardboiled style to a more literary one.
Four stars. I will continue to preach the Pelecanos Gospel.
February 28, 2019
My first George Pelecanos novel was King Suckerman which I bought after hearing a radio interview with him on NPR back in the late ‘90s. I didn’t realize it at the time but that was actually the second book in his DC Quartet series, and while I went on to read the rest of those as well as his Strange & Quinn series along with several of his stand-alone novels, I never went back and read his earlier Nick Stefanos novels or this one until recently. After finally working my way through those, I’m really regretting not having taken the trouble to track them all down and read them in order.
Forgive me, Oh Great and Mighty Pelecanos. I have sinned against thee and can only beg your mercy.
In addition to being the first book in its own arc this also functions a sort of prequel to the Nick Stefanos trilogy with a story that concerns his grandfather, also named Nick, back in the post-war 1940s. However, the story is more about Pete Karras who ran the streets of DC in his youth with his buddies and then went off to the Pacific during World War II in which he did his fair share of killing. Back in DC after the war, Pete hooks up with his friend Joe Recevo and they start doing some muscle work for a small-time gangster building a protection racket. However, Pete is mouthy and doesn’t like getting rough with other Greek immigrants so he gets a very painful beating as his pink slip from the gang.
Three years later and Pete is married with an infant son that he supports by working in Nick’s diner. A dissatisfied Pete drifts through his days by cheating on his wife and leaving his family home alone as he walks the streets of DC bumping into friends and enemies. Eventually storylines involving a young man looking for his sister, a string of vicious killings of prostitutes and an extortion scheme against Nick all collide into one big mess with Pete in the middle.
Pete is a typical Pelecanos creation in a lot of ways. He loves DC and spends most of his time haunting various spots in the city. He broods over the past and is dissatisfied with the present while having an idea that his inability to focus on the here and now is causing life to pass him by. He wishes he was a better husband and father, but can’t muster the will power to just sit at home and play with his son when the city’s night life calls to him. Pete seems trapped by his own lack of inertia and rejects any idea of trying to start his own business or otherwise do anything that might change his life.
These outsider characters that Pelecanos writes feel like they don’t fit into their own lives. They’re more comfortable making grand and dangerous gestures for friends that allow them to keep their self image of being loyal intact while they’re failing basic responsibilities in other areas. They’ve got just enough sense and gumption to avoid being labeled total screw-ups, but there’s a stubborn clinging to their idea of what used to be rather than ever trying to move forward. I’d call them tragic in some ways, but that’d be playing into their own romantic self-images and I don’t want to be an enabler.
This is a great story about a bygone era and Peleancos really makes you feel like you’re in post-war DC with a pack of smokes and a shot of rye on the bar in front of you. You could worry about the characters he makes you care about in this dark story, but it’d be pointless because they ain’t going to change. So just tilt your fedora back on your head and salute them with the shot glass before downing it. That’s the kind of gesture they’d appreciate as they go out looking for trouble.
Forgive me, Oh Great and Mighty Pelecanos. I have sinned against thee and can only beg your mercy.
In addition to being the first book in its own arc this also functions a sort of prequel to the Nick Stefanos trilogy with a story that concerns his grandfather, also named Nick, back in the post-war 1940s. However, the story is more about Pete Karras who ran the streets of DC in his youth with his buddies and then went off to the Pacific during World War II in which he did his fair share of killing. Back in DC after the war, Pete hooks up with his friend Joe Recevo and they start doing some muscle work for a small-time gangster building a protection racket. However, Pete is mouthy and doesn’t like getting rough with other Greek immigrants so he gets a very painful beating as his pink slip from the gang.
Three years later and Pete is married with an infant son that he supports by working in Nick’s diner. A dissatisfied Pete drifts through his days by cheating on his wife and leaving his family home alone as he walks the streets of DC bumping into friends and enemies. Eventually storylines involving a young man looking for his sister, a string of vicious killings of prostitutes and an extortion scheme against Nick all collide into one big mess with Pete in the middle.
Pete is a typical Pelecanos creation in a lot of ways. He loves DC and spends most of his time haunting various spots in the city. He broods over the past and is dissatisfied with the present while having an idea that his inability to focus on the here and now is causing life to pass him by. He wishes he was a better husband and father, but can’t muster the will power to just sit at home and play with his son when the city’s night life calls to him. Pete seems trapped by his own lack of inertia and rejects any idea of trying to start his own business or otherwise do anything that might change his life.
These outsider characters that Pelecanos writes feel like they don’t fit into their own lives. They’re more comfortable making grand and dangerous gestures for friends that allow them to keep their self image of being loyal intact while they’re failing basic responsibilities in other areas. They’ve got just enough sense and gumption to avoid being labeled total screw-ups, but there’s a stubborn clinging to their idea of what used to be rather than ever trying to move forward. I’d call them tragic in some ways, but that’d be playing into their own romantic self-images and I don’t want to be an enabler.
This is a great story about a bygone era and Peleancos really makes you feel like you’re in post-war DC with a pack of smokes and a shot of rye on the bar in front of you. You could worry about the characters he makes you care about in this dark story, but it’d be pointless because they ain’t going to change. So just tilt your fedora back on your head and salute them with the shot glass before downing it. That’s the kind of gesture they’d appreciate as they go out looking for trouble.
July 11, 2020
This hardcover of “The Big Blowdown” by George Pelecanos is signed by the author.
The time and place in This novel takes place in the 1940s’ in Washington D.C. Pete Karras, goes off to war and comes back a hero along with his Italian friend Joe Recevo. Pete is a confirmed womanizer, but he's also a softie on the guys he's being paid to shake down, other Italian immigrants. The easiest work to find after the War is all criminal, As a penalty for shirking his tough guy duty, Pete is betrayed by his friend Joe Recevo and disabled by his former employer Mr. Burke, so, he gets his legs broken and ends up limping through the streets he loves. Pete is working the counter of a diner owned by Nick Stefanos (the father, presumably, of the Nick we know from previous Pelecanos novels). However, this book is the first of Pelecanos's acclaimed DC Quartet books.
Mr. Pelecanos is not capable of writing a bad sentence.
The time and place in This novel takes place in the 1940s’ in Washington D.C. Pete Karras, goes off to war and comes back a hero along with his Italian friend Joe Recevo. Pete is a confirmed womanizer, but he's also a softie on the guys he's being paid to shake down, other Italian immigrants. The easiest work to find after the War is all criminal, As a penalty for shirking his tough guy duty, Pete is betrayed by his friend Joe Recevo and disabled by his former employer Mr. Burke, so, he gets his legs broken and ends up limping through the streets he loves. Pete is working the counter of a diner owned by Nick Stefanos (the father, presumably, of the Nick we know from previous Pelecanos novels). However, this book is the first of Pelecanos's acclaimed DC Quartet books.
Mr. Pelecanos is not capable of writing a bad sentence.
January 1, 2022
CRITIQUE:
Vital Ingredients
Don't you hate it when you're following a recipe that you memorised years ago, and you get to the end of the cooking process, and you realise that you've omitted a vital ingredient?
This once happened to one of my aunts, a nurse. She finished a batch of rum balls, and suddenly it dawned on her that she had forgotten the rum. Not to be discouraged, she injected the rum into each rum ball with a medical syringe. It made for great rum balls.
I mention this, because, although I've read and enjoyed this crime novel before, up until about two thirds of the way through, it seemed that an ingredient was missing. And that ingredient was a fairly crucial one - the crime.
In the last third, though, two things happened: Pelecanos injected a syringe-full of crime into the denouement, and I realised that the criminal content was always intended to be secondary to the Greek immigrant milieu in which Pelecanos had set the novel.
The Big Slowdown
Although it doesn't seem like it, the novel is set in Washington, D.C., between 1933 and 1959.
Various Greek boys, the sons of immigrants, grow up, do their duty, and go to war, most of them returning, at which point, they find jobs, get married and start having children. The bonds formed with each other and with other second generation immigrants (e.g., an Italian) last, and resist the temptation to join the Mafia-like loan and protection rackets that are trying to take over Washington restaurants and cafes:
The Big Lowdown
Paradoxically, they continue to womanise, and maintain mistresses. Peter Karras goes straight from a church service (during which he checks out the single women on the pews around him) to his mistress, Vera's, apartment for afternoon sex. It's what makes him a man to whom the others look up:
For all their aberrations and idiosyncrasies, these characters are real, flawed people, with whom you can sympathise, when their ideas run to crime, and crime runs them down (and their children go fatherless).
SOUNDTRACK:
Vital Ingredients
Don't you hate it when you're following a recipe that you memorised years ago, and you get to the end of the cooking process, and you realise that you've omitted a vital ingredient?
This once happened to one of my aunts, a nurse. She finished a batch of rum balls, and suddenly it dawned on her that she had forgotten the rum. Not to be discouraged, she injected the rum into each rum ball with a medical syringe. It made for great rum balls.
I mention this, because, although I've read and enjoyed this crime novel before, up until about two thirds of the way through, it seemed that an ingredient was missing. And that ingredient was a fairly crucial one - the crime.
In the last third, though, two things happened: Pelecanos injected a syringe-full of crime into the denouement, and I realised that the criminal content was always intended to be secondary to the Greek immigrant milieu in which Pelecanos had set the novel.
The Big Slowdown
Although it doesn't seem like it, the novel is set in Washington, D.C., between 1933 and 1959.
Various Greek boys, the sons of immigrants, grow up, do their duty, and go to war, most of them returning, at which point, they find jobs, get married and start having children. The bonds formed with each other and with other second generation immigrants (e.g., an Italian) last, and resist the temptation to join the Mafia-like loan and protection rackets that are trying to take over Washington restaurants and cafes:
"Remember it, chum. It doesn't take any brains to slug a guy or to hang out with hoods or get yourself off track. No brains and no magic..."
"I wanna slow things down around here, no more hoods hangin' around. And no more guns and no more knives. I gonna slow down myself - on my drinkin', and my gamblin', and everything else..."
The Big Lowdown
Paradoxically, they continue to womanise, and maintain mistresses. Peter Karras goes straight from a church service (during which he checks out the single women on the pews around him) to his mistress, Vera's, apartment for afternoon sex. It's what makes him a man to whom the others look up:
"He thought of these Greek-Americans, who came to church each Sunday with their families, who worked hard as their fathers had, who knew what it was to make the full commitment that it took to be a man, who understood how difficult it was to stay on the path, and how easy it could be to stumble, yet in the end kept right to it."
For all their aberrations and idiosyncrasies, these characters are real, flawed people, with whom you can sympathise, when their ideas run to crime, and crime runs them down (and their children go fatherless).
SOUNDTRACK:
June 12, 2014
In the first chapters, it is 1933 and Peter Karras is an 11 year old son of Greek immigrants in Washington DC. Those chapters simultaneously attracted my attention and worried me. The milieu Pelecanos created appealed to me, in part because Peter Karras’ world reminded me of my father’s. Though their regions and ethnicities differed, details continuously evoked memories of my grandparent’s environs and way of life. However, I occasionally wondered if I would ultimately regret picking up The Big Blowdown. Something about those early chapters did not always click. That something is a little hard for me to pin down, even now, but it had to do with the style or the author’s voice. Nothing I can cite specifically, but it felt a little cold, like Pelecanos was keeping me at arm’s length, like he did not love me yet.
That nagging doubt did not last. The next section takes place in 1944 and Peter Karras is a soldier fighting in the Philippines. Each chapter in the section begins simply with two words: Peter Karras. It reminded me of Hemingway’s writing in For Whom the Bell Tolls because Hemingway constantly used his main character’s full name, Robert Jordan, instead of shortening it to Rob or even Robert.
So, yeah, things were getting more and more interesting. We’re privy to a few incidents from Karras’ childhood, then some intense moments of war, but by page 43 it is 1946 and Karras is back in Washington DC and hanging out with his boyhood chum, Joe Recevo. They’re young, early twenties, and uninterested in working 9 to 5. They work for Mr. Burke, who makes his money from high-interest loans and protection rackets, but Pete’s heart is not in it and it shows...
I like the way Pelecanos organized this novel. He does not stick strictly to Peter Karras’ point of view to tell the story, so we end up with Michael Florek, a ways away in Pennsylvania, and the contrast between the two men, Florek and Karras, was painful, amusing, hilarious, tragic and heart-rending. And then they meet, but that’s not the point, because essentially this is a genre novel, plot driven, and insane. I laughed out loud at some of the violence, not because the description was lame but because the images were so vivid. A nervous laugh, what else could I do?
If I ever spot George Pelecanos slumped over but somewhat conscious in a Washington DC bar, I’m not sure I’d approach. His eye for detail, his ability to express various ethnic identities, his love of music, his sense of humor, is all spot on beautiful, but, the underlying message, perhaps, is more dark than hopeful.
Perhaps. Because we also get Nick Stefanos and the other guys at his grill and this novel ends with them and Nick has a grandson who is also named Nick and I got the feeling somewhere that some of Pelecano’s other novels follow that Nick’s story, and you know what, I’m hooked...
That nagging doubt did not last. The next section takes place in 1944 and Peter Karras is a soldier fighting in the Philippines. Each chapter in the section begins simply with two words: Peter Karras. It reminded me of Hemingway’s writing in For Whom the Bell Tolls because Hemingway constantly used his main character’s full name, Robert Jordan, instead of shortening it to Rob or even Robert.
So, yeah, things were getting more and more interesting. We’re privy to a few incidents from Karras’ childhood, then some intense moments of war, but by page 43 it is 1946 and Karras is back in Washington DC and hanging out with his boyhood chum, Joe Recevo. They’re young, early twenties, and uninterested in working 9 to 5. They work for Mr. Burke, who makes his money from high-interest loans and protection rackets, but Pete’s heart is not in it and it shows...
I like the way Pelecanos organized this novel. He does not stick strictly to Peter Karras’ point of view to tell the story, so we end up with Michael Florek, a ways away in Pennsylvania, and the contrast between the two men, Florek and Karras, was painful, amusing, hilarious, tragic and heart-rending. And then they meet, but that’s not the point, because essentially this is a genre novel, plot driven, and insane. I laughed out loud at some of the violence, not because the description was lame but because the images were so vivid. A nervous laugh, what else could I do?
If I ever spot George Pelecanos slumped over but somewhat conscious in a Washington DC bar, I’m not sure I’d approach. His eye for detail, his ability to express various ethnic identities, his love of music, his sense of humor, is all spot on beautiful, but, the underlying message, perhaps, is more dark than hopeful.
Perhaps. Because we also get Nick Stefanos and the other guys at his grill and this novel ends with them and Nick has a grandson who is also named Nick and I got the feeling somewhere that some of Pelecano’s other novels follow that Nick’s story, and you know what, I’m hooked...
January 6, 2017
This is the first of the famed DC Quartet. And it's Pelecanos at his best.
In 1940s Washington DC, a more gentle natured Peter Karras, and another neighbourhood young man, Joey Rcevo, decide they can find work by being enforcers for the hood's Mafioso. But Pete doesn't have the hard edge and isn't extorting the ethnic families as much as he could do, as a result he's in too deep.
The showdown 'The Big Blowdown' is coming and Pete's honour and integrity will be challenged...
Like all Pelecanos' novels, the neighbourhood and it's culture, and its people feel authentic. Pelcanos' grasp of culture, community and its discourse, if first rate. This is more than your average crime novel. It's an exciting trip down memory lane into the ethnic crime-fuelled enclaves of Yesterday DC.
In 1940s Washington DC, a more gentle natured Peter Karras, and another neighbourhood young man, Joey Rcevo, decide they can find work by being enforcers for the hood's Mafioso. But Pete doesn't have the hard edge and isn't extorting the ethnic families as much as he could do, as a result he's in too deep.
The showdown 'The Big Blowdown' is coming and Pete's honour and integrity will be challenged...
Like all Pelecanos' novels, the neighbourhood and it's culture, and its people feel authentic. Pelcanos' grasp of culture, community and its discourse, if first rate. This is more than your average crime novel. It's an exciting trip down memory lane into the ethnic crime-fuelled enclaves of Yesterday DC.
September 4, 2023
Σαρωτικος Πελεκάνος
July 14, 2011
This was my introduction to George Pelecanos - the first of his that I read. I was immediately hooked. There is something about the immediacy of his language and depth of characterisation that draws you in regadless of the quality of the plot. I think that was furtehr emphasised in the brillant series - The Wire- where his writing and that of Dennis Lehane, shone through. I have read everything he's written since - most recently The Way Home - and I think of all the modern Americal crime writers he comes closest to capturing contemporary American life with prose that combines the quality of charcterisation found in British crime novels, and the sharp spare dialogue of American of novelists in the genre.
January 11, 2022
The Big Blowdown is an excellent novel about postwar D.C. in a most dangerous and sexy iteration. You can feel Pelecanos, but his influences seem to have a stronger presence in the tone of this book. I'm talking James Ellroy, Richard Yates, Philip Roth, and a dash of Le Carre. This may simply be because the setting is midcentury with a crime flavor. Either way, it's a great book about a pivotal moment in America's history.
April 16, 2011
This is one of Pelecanos’ early books. The Big Blowdown was published in 1996. It already has many of the Pelecanos trademarks that you will still find in his stories 15 years later: camaraderie, cars, violence, smoking and poverty. It is part of the DC Quartet of Pelecanos books published from 1996 to 1999. Yes, that works out to one a year. The other three books are King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever and Shame the Devil. I am looking forward to reading them in that order. I often read Pelecanos as a reward for reading books that I find less enjoyable but that I think I ought to read. For me Pelecanos is the candy after the medicine. For me he is dependably sweet and eventually has me coming back for more.
Pelecanos draws complex characters. They fight in war even as Pelecanos has them thinking of the absurdity of war. (There is also a Fear the Bomb character juxtaposed with commentary about why it was good that we dropped the bomb on Japan. In fact, the title of the book is an illusion to the destructive power of The Bomb.)
In another contradiction, Pelecanos, always in love with muscle cars, has a character opine that mass transit (and even walking) is better than owning a car. He does want to confuse me about his positions on the issues of the day. He does interject various social issues several times each book, a fact that continues to intrigue the social activist part of me. What does he really think? I like to think of him as a progressive I would like.
In each book his characters grow up and learn or reinforce lessons in life. And, as I have observed before, his well developed characters are always male. The women are mothers or lovers or wives or secretaries. I don’t want to think what a feminist might think of him. I think he would have a lot of explaining to do.
It’s Pelecanos so there has to be a bloodbath or two. It’s Pelecanos so there is a lot of cigarette smoking. (What will he do in the era when you can’t smoke in restaurants and even bars?) Since I like Pelecanos, I ignore a lot of political incorrectness.
What is the theme sentence? How about this one: “But you’ve got to stand for something sometime. At least you gotta try.” So we have the morally struggling ‘bad’ guy who becomes the hero by doing the right thing. Nothing is black and white. Pelecanos specializes in shades of grey. Well, maybe there are some bad guys who are just straight out bad guys. But the good guys are always imperfect in some serious ways. Like maybe they’ve killed a few people and feel good about it.
It turned out that I had read this book before, a fact that I realized over and over after reading a section and remembering it as each word slipped by from my faulty memory. I will probably be able to read this book again in ten years. This time I couldn’t remember the end until I got to it. Since this is the first of a four book series, I am wondering if I have read the other three as well. I swear (OK, affirm) I haven’t but maybe I will remember them all paragraph by paragraph.
Pelecanos draws complex characters. They fight in war even as Pelecanos has them thinking of the absurdity of war. (There is also a Fear the Bomb character juxtaposed with commentary about why it was good that we dropped the bomb on Japan. In fact, the title of the book is an illusion to the destructive power of The Bomb.)
You could talk about Corregidor and Bataan, and all the things they had done, things too terrible to repeat. Well, he had done some bad things, too. Everything came out in the wash, and in the end it was just two groups of men fighting and killing over a piece of land that everyone but the dead would walk away from when the shooting was done.
In another contradiction, Pelecanos, always in love with muscle cars, has a character opine that mass transit (and even walking) is better than owning a car. He does want to confuse me about his positions on the issues of the day. He does interject various social issues several times each book, a fact that continues to intrigue the social activist part of me. What does he really think? I like to think of him as a progressive I would like.
In each book his characters grow up and learn or reinforce lessons in life. And, as I have observed before, his well developed characters are always male. The women are mothers or lovers or wives or secretaries. I don’t want to think what a feminist might think of him. I think he would have a lot of explaining to do.
It’s Pelecanos so there has to be a bloodbath or two. It’s Pelecanos so there is a lot of cigarette smoking. (What will he do in the era when you can’t smoke in restaurants and even bars?) Since I like Pelecanos, I ignore a lot of political incorrectness.
What is the theme sentence? How about this one: “But you’ve got to stand for something sometime. At least you gotta try.” So we have the morally struggling ‘bad’ guy who becomes the hero by doing the right thing. Nothing is black and white. Pelecanos specializes in shades of grey. Well, maybe there are some bad guys who are just straight out bad guys. But the good guys are always imperfect in some serious ways. Like maybe they’ve killed a few people and feel good about it.
It turned out that I had read this book before, a fact that I realized over and over after reading a section and remembering it as each word slipped by from my faulty memory. I will probably be able to read this book again in ten years. This time I couldn’t remember the end until I got to it. Since this is the first of a four book series, I am wondering if I have read the other three as well. I swear (OK, affirm) I haven’t but maybe I will remember them all paragraph by paragraph.
August 23, 2010
"The Big Blowdown" is one of George Pelecanos's earlier books (1996), which explores the lives of a number of boys, descendants of Greek and Italian immigrants, who are friends during the depression years of the 1930s and who then grow into adulthood. Most of the book takes place in the post-war years as these men, now young adults, search for their places in the world.
Some of them, of course, make better choices than others. Two of the principal characters, Pete Karras and Joe Recevo come home from World War II and turn to organized crime. But Pete doesn't have the heart to be a shakedown artist picking on poor immigrants and he is brutally separated from the mob and from his friend Joe. Several years later, Pete and Joe cross paths again when the mob attempts to move in on the restaurant where Pete is working and the results will be explosive.
Along the way, Pete also befriends a young kid who has come to the city searching for his sister who has turned to prostitution to support a heroin habit, and this gives some meaning and purpose to a life that Pete feels he has largely wasted. Finally, running through much of the book is a series of prostitute killings that bedevils another of Pete's boyhood friends, policeman Jimmy Boyle. All of these threads are woven together to produce a stunning climax.
Like virtually all of Pelecanos's books, this one is set in Washington D.C. and provides a vivid portrayal of the city at a certain point in time. Like all of Pelecanos's books, this one is also infused with sex, violence and with the music of the era. The book begins a bit slowly as Pelecanos introduces the characters, but once it gets rolling, it's hard to put it down. All of the characters are expertly drawn and they are placed in perfectly believable settings. This is another winner from a very gifted writer.
Some of them, of course, make better choices than others. Two of the principal characters, Pete Karras and Joe Recevo come home from World War II and turn to organized crime. But Pete doesn't have the heart to be a shakedown artist picking on poor immigrants and he is brutally separated from the mob and from his friend Joe. Several years later, Pete and Joe cross paths again when the mob attempts to move in on the restaurant where Pete is working and the results will be explosive.
Along the way, Pete also befriends a young kid who has come to the city searching for his sister who has turned to prostitution to support a heroin habit, and this gives some meaning and purpose to a life that Pete feels he has largely wasted. Finally, running through much of the book is a series of prostitute killings that bedevils another of Pete's boyhood friends, policeman Jimmy Boyle. All of these threads are woven together to produce a stunning climax.
Like virtually all of Pelecanos's books, this one is set in Washington D.C. and provides a vivid portrayal of the city at a certain point in time. Like all of Pelecanos's books, this one is also infused with sex, violence and with the music of the era. The book begins a bit slowly as Pelecanos introduces the characters, but once it gets rolling, it's hard to put it down. All of the characters are expertly drawn and they are placed in perfectly believable settings. This is another winner from a very gifted writer.
September 11, 2024
New favorite crime novelist. Very much enjoyed this first in a cycle called the "DC quartet." Love it when writers fictionalize the geography that they know. Great the way the plot threads weave together. Seeing a title with "The Big..." anything in it you expect some gritty tough guy noir and Pelecanos does not disappoint. There's a gratuitous scene where a character from the prologue section reappears solely that he might turn the protagonist on to BeBop and the crazy sound of Parker's horn. Eminently forgivable if you love jazz like I do.
January 30, 2019
I had persisted with Pelecanos though the Nick Stefanos books were self indulgent in parts, mainly due to his writing. I believed once he matures as a storyteller he had the talent in place to deliver a truly cracking crime caper. After finishing this I think I made the right decision.
Pelecanos really excels at setting a scene. He creates an air of despair, dereliction and decrepitude that engulfs the pages. It is not even overtly cynical, the hopelessness is depressingly pragmatic. The plot is a bit by the numbers but the writing holds the reader's attention.
The ending feels a little too convenient mainly because one of the characters playing a major part in it (Joe Reveco) is left under developed throughout the book. It is a minor blemish on an otherwise good tale.
This might not be able to hold a candle to LA Quartet (comparisons are bound to happen when the name is a homage to the greatest crime series of all) but it stands tall on its own merits when not measured against such lofty heights. Rating - 4/5.
Pelecanos really excels at setting a scene. He creates an air of despair, dereliction and decrepitude that engulfs the pages. It is not even overtly cynical, the hopelessness is depressingly pragmatic. The plot is a bit by the numbers but the writing holds the reader's attention.
The ending feels a little too convenient mainly because one of the characters playing a major part in it (Joe Reveco) is left under developed throughout the book. It is a minor blemish on an otherwise good tale.
This might not be able to hold a candle to LA Quartet (comparisons are bound to happen when the name is a homage to the greatest crime series of all) but it stands tall on its own merits when not measured against such lofty heights. Rating - 4/5.
March 15, 2021
Dreadful, unfortunate cover and the text font was slightly off-putting. Sadly, these things matter to me more than they should. So much of reading for me is the idea of choosing, again and again, to pick up the book despite having so many other options and demands on my time. When the book itself is aesthetically unappealing it just adds unnecessary hurdles for my brain to overcome to engage with, what in this case was a pretty good story.
Once I got far enough into the action that the story had me hooked, I really enjoyed the book, for the most part. Everything was so precisely constructed; even the tiniest elements introduced early on found a payoff down the line. There was a great sense of place, and the main character's struggle to find a balance between self-indulgence and the building of a life with others really resonated in a way I didn't see coming.
On a rougher note, this is my second straight book set in the first half of the 20th century, and I'm finding it harder to get through portrayals of life back then for Black people. I'm embarrassed to say it bothers me more now, because it makes me realize that it didn't bother me as much as it should have previously. I guess, I used to see such portrayals as more detached from current conditions, so it was easier to view them as an account from another time, with a set of wrongs that had (at least mostly) been made right.
Now it's hard not to see it all as a continuum, with injustices then laying the groundwork for ongoing injustices and conditions now. And while it's true things have gotten better, it's just so dismal to read that things were ever allowed to be the way that they were, and to know how much this disgraceful past continues to follow us, makes it so impossibly difficult for us to move forward to something better today.
Once I got far enough into the action that the story had me hooked, I really enjoyed the book, for the most part. Everything was so precisely constructed; even the tiniest elements introduced early on found a payoff down the line. There was a great sense of place, and the main character's struggle to find a balance between self-indulgence and the building of a life with others really resonated in a way I didn't see coming.
On a rougher note, this is my second straight book set in the first half of the 20th century, and I'm finding it harder to get through portrayals of life back then for Black people. I'm embarrassed to say it bothers me more now, because it makes me realize that it didn't bother me as much as it should have previously. I guess, I used to see such portrayals as more detached from current conditions, so it was easier to view them as an account from another time, with a set of wrongs that had (at least mostly) been made right.
Now it's hard not to see it all as a continuum, with injustices then laying the groundwork for ongoing injustices and conditions now. And while it's true things have gotten better, it's just so dismal to read that things were ever allowed to be the way that they were, and to know how much this disgraceful past continues to follow us, makes it so impossibly difficult for us to move forward to something better today.
March 28, 2021
As a writer for the Wire, Pelecanos already is infallible in my mind. I have read a few of his more recent books but wanted to go back a bit and this one was a great choice it turned out. It's partial historical non-fiction as really goes over growing up in the depression, going to war where everyone was both heroic and meat and making it through when others didn't, all by chance, and coming home to a new beginning was done at a very personal level but gave a great view of the country, particularly from the eyes of an immigrant family. Then, it's a hard city "crime" novel but more just a story of boys that became men and how they changed .... or maybe didn't. Pelecanos never takes the easy way out and didn't here which made it even more powerful.
I'm somewhat surprised to see it's the first in a series - will definitely be reading the rest. Highly recommend for just about anyone. It is a little rough in language, going with the time - not inaccurate but definitely have to know going in things were different.
I'm somewhat surprised to see it's the first in a series - will definitely be reading the rest. Highly recommend for just about anyone. It is a little rough in language, going with the time - not inaccurate but definitely have to know going in things were different.
June 18, 2017
What I wrote back then: Excellent story about Pete Karras, who grew up in Washington, DC, fought in WWII, and had his knee smashed by the local crime boss who didn't like him. How he was let down by his best friend Joe Recevo, but at the end they went out together in a blaze of glory, trying to do the right thing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to read
April 19, 2019Synopsis: in 1946, two local D.C. men find work by providing muscle for a local mob boss. But one of them is soft, and needs to be taught a lesson.
March 31, 2021
2.5*
Το Big Blowdown αν και δεν μου άρεσε και με κούρασε, σίγουρα μου κέντρισε το ενδιαφέρον.
Το "ταξίδι" μου με τον Pelecanos μόλις ξεκίνησε!
Το Big Blowdown αν και δεν μου άρεσε και με κούρασε, σίγουρα μου κέντρισε το ενδιαφέρον.
Το "ταξίδι" μου με τον Pelecanos μόλις ξεκίνησε!
June 17, 2018
Okay, so I'm reading these books out of order. I read book 3 first, then book 4, the last one. Now, I just read book one, and I have book 2 downstairs in my basement. Lol. I will say this. I'm actually glad I read these out of order since this feels like an awesome prequel. Pete Karas, father to Dimitri Karas, is just like his son. Or vice versa. But what I really love is that all the references that come up later are all right here. Little tidbits become full story arcs, and this is a strong book, but I prefer books 3 and 4 to this one. Especially book 3. Some of the early, childhood stuff is a little slow, and the WW2 stuff, while exciting, also feels a little out of place. All in all, it doesn't feel quite as cohesive as the later books. Still great, but a little weak compared to the others.
September 13, 2017
Nice book
maybe
January 11, 2017One of the few Pelecanos novels I don't have yet. Quite sure I'll be getting to it sometime.
June 10, 2012
Pete Karras is back home after his time as a Marine in the Pacific battlefields of WWII. Drifting, he ends up on the wrong end of the deal with bad men, and now is slowly coming back into the world. His is a gray exisitence, neither white nor black, good nor bad, but he is wounded in body and spirit, and as we shall see, it's not a sure thing that he will ever be whole.
Back story gives us a growing-up perspective, with childhood pals who are woven into Pete's life as an adult, some on the good side of the scale, some not so much. All of GP's characters are nicely drawn, and as usual he gives us the busman's tour of DC, this time in a kind of sepia-toned remembrance of the late 40's after the war. Get out your Greek dictionary...lots of dialogue to try to translate, but you'll know the gist.
Pete's life passes before us, and while he is an imperfect man, we see that at his core there is the strength of his forebears, the Spartans.
4 stars.
Back story gives us a growing-up perspective, with childhood pals who are woven into Pete's life as an adult, some on the good side of the scale, some not so much. All of GP's characters are nicely drawn, and as usual he gives us the busman's tour of DC, this time in a kind of sepia-toned remembrance of the late 40's after the war. Get out your Greek dictionary...lots of dialogue to try to translate, but you'll know the gist.
Pete's life passes before us, and while he is an imperfect man, we see that at his core there is the strength of his forebears, the Spartans.
4 stars.
August 19, 2016
I loved this richly textured noirish crime novel set in the Greek community of Washington DC in the immediate postwar era. I came to it because I was so frustrated with James Ellroy's "Perfidia," and Pelecanos's DC Quartet seems to be one of the few crime series at all similar or related to Ellroy's LA Quartet. Unfortunately, from what I can tell they're not even remotely similar. The two authors have styles so unbelievably different it's pretty much impossible to compare them. Nonetheless, I loved The Big Blowdown's details about Greek-American culture, and the sights and smells of DC at the time. Sometimes Pelecanos indulges his history-nerd pop culture trivia obsession a little too deeply, but ultimately it all comes out in the wash. This is a stupendously enjoyable and yet memorably melancholy book, extremely readable and filled with crystalline moments.
December 1, 2007
This would also be one that would stand as one of his "serious" novels because it paints a picture of the 1930s and the lives of immigrants in the DC area. James Sallis writes in the intro to the book: "He writes of immigrants, of blacks, of the young, of all the damaged and disadvantaged and discarded shut away in rented rooms or shuttled aside into bars and diners reeking of stagnant time till, their moment come around at last, they erupt, burn furiously, and expire." Wow-that's pretty much it.
June 18, 2014
I've been following Pelecanos' career for a while now, reading anything of his I could get my hands on, and I think you can pinpoint this as the novel where he really hits his stride; all the familiar themes are there - friendship, manhood, loyalty, car, music, films, women - but they are handled so smoothly. Plus the dialogue and characters fizzle and the historical setting adds weight. The back of the book namechecks Tarantino, but I think it's more Scorcese.
March 15, 2014
I read this out of order, having already read books 2, 3 and 4 of The DC Quartet, so while the events of this novel are glossed to a lesser or greater extent in those books, it was no less a pleasure to get Pete Karras' side of the story having spent so much time with his son Dimitri and witnessed the growing pains he underwent being raised without a father. This book did not disappoint.
March 29, 2009
A World War Two vet drifts into providing muscle for a protection racket in Washington D.C. but really does not have the stomach for the work. I thought this was a very interesting look at DC after the war, especially within the immigrant community.
January 17, 2024
A helluva story, with characters and setting drawn to perfection. Also, very, very dark.
Who is this book for? People who stop and reread a sentence or a paragraph simply because the writing is breathtakingly perfect.
Who is this book for? People who stop and reread a sentence or a paragraph simply because the writing is breathtakingly perfect.
August 11, 2020
This book contains a plot line about a serial killer who targets overweight prostitutes, and that doesn't even come close to being the main point of the tale.
I picked this book up at a used book store a couple of years ago and it had been sitting on my shelf untouched ever since. When I recently binge watched The Wire (yes, I am from Baltimore and hadn't seen The Wire until just recently) and noticed that George Pelecanos was a writer on many of the episodes, it piqued my interest to finally read this. I have to say I am happy that I did, as it became one of my rare 5-star rated reads.
Pete Karras, Joey Recevo, and the rest of their friends are all the children of immigrants, growing up in Washington, D.C. during the Great Depression. When they're not in school, they spend most of their time running around together outside, getting into some trouble, but nothing too major--they're just typical poor kids in this era who share the bond of friendship.
Fast forward 10 years and the friends are in their early-20s. Most of them end up in the military during World War II. Some, like Pete and Joey, see combat. Pete in particular sees quite a lot of it, though he is fortunate to make it through physically unscathed, as does Joey. At least one of their friends is not so lucky.
Once the war is over, Pete finds himself struggling to find his place in the world. He gets married and has a kid but is clearly not happy with his life. He rarely is around his family and finds any excuse he can to be out of the house (which was more typical of the times then than it is today, but it was still much different than some of his other friends who had settled down). He has at least one mistress and doesn't have an honest job--he ends up working as muscle alongside Joey, working for a small-time mobster named Mr. Burke, shaking down people for loan repayments and protection money. Although in many ways Pete is more cut out for the job than Joey, whose tough exterior is more of a front, he finds it particularly hard to be tough on fellow members of the Greek community. This lack of follow-through angers Mr. Burke, whose cronies teach Pete a lesson and bust his knee in a back alley, while Joey turns a blind eye.
Three years later, now "crippled" (word used in the book, though Pete can still walk) and working as a short order cook at his friend Nick Stefanos' diner, Pete is even more rudderless than he was. He's now without his best friend, just going through the motions of life--still married, but still unhappy with his home life. However, he finds new purpose when Mike Florek, a young guy from Pennsylvania, comes down to D.C. looking for his sister, Lola. Lola got mixed up in drugs and prostitution and her pimp whisked her away to the big city. Florek is there to look for her, but he really has no idea where to start looking and ends up just falling into a rhythm of life in D.C., getting a job alongside Pete at Nick's place, where business is booming now that he switched over to making it a "colored joint" at a time when segregation was very much still in full swing. Pete finds purpose in helping Mike find his sister. At the same time, Joey comes back into Pete's life when Mr. Burke's organization decides they're going to try to shakedown Nick for "protection money", as they see his business is taking off. All of the story lines (the hunt for Lola, the prostitute murders, the shakedown of Nick, Pete and Joey's friendship, and Pete's search for purpose) all end up converging at the end in one Big Blowdown.
Although there was a lot of "stuff" that happened in this book, it was really more than anything a story about Pete Karras' character. The second most important "character" was likely the setting--both the time and the place. I obviously didn't live during that time, but I came away thinking that Pete's story was representative of what many were experiencing during that time--growing up in a melting pot of a city, in a very tight-knit ethnic (Greek) community, and coming back to find the city and yourself very much changed after WWII. This book was written in 1996, but if someone had told me it was written in the 1940s or 1950s I would have believed them. I feel like Pelecanos nailed the language and the mannerisms of the time. I am very interested in reading the rest of the DC Quartet, along with other books that Pelecanos has written.
I picked this book up at a used book store a couple of years ago and it had been sitting on my shelf untouched ever since. When I recently binge watched The Wire (yes, I am from Baltimore and hadn't seen The Wire until just recently) and noticed that George Pelecanos was a writer on many of the episodes, it piqued my interest to finally read this. I have to say I am happy that I did, as it became one of my rare 5-star rated reads.
Pete Karras, Joey Recevo, and the rest of their friends are all the children of immigrants, growing up in Washington, D.C. during the Great Depression. When they're not in school, they spend most of their time running around together outside, getting into some trouble, but nothing too major--they're just typical poor kids in this era who share the bond of friendship.
Fast forward 10 years and the friends are in their early-20s. Most of them end up in the military during World War II. Some, like Pete and Joey, see combat. Pete in particular sees quite a lot of it, though he is fortunate to make it through physically unscathed, as does Joey. At least one of their friends is not so lucky.
Once the war is over, Pete finds himself struggling to find his place in the world. He gets married and has a kid but is clearly not happy with his life. He rarely is around his family and finds any excuse he can to be out of the house (which was more typical of the times then than it is today, but it was still much different than some of his other friends who had settled down). He has at least one mistress and doesn't have an honest job--he ends up working as muscle alongside Joey, working for a small-time mobster named Mr. Burke, shaking down people for loan repayments and protection money. Although in many ways Pete is more cut out for the job than Joey, whose tough exterior is more of a front, he finds it particularly hard to be tough on fellow members of the Greek community. This lack of follow-through angers Mr. Burke, whose cronies teach Pete a lesson and bust his knee in a back alley, while Joey turns a blind eye.
Three years later, now "crippled" (word used in the book, though Pete can still walk) and working as a short order cook at his friend Nick Stefanos' diner, Pete is even more rudderless than he was. He's now without his best friend, just going through the motions of life--still married, but still unhappy with his home life. However, he finds new purpose when Mike Florek, a young guy from Pennsylvania, comes down to D.C. looking for his sister, Lola. Lola got mixed up in drugs and prostitution and her pimp whisked her away to the big city. Florek is there to look for her, but he really has no idea where to start looking and ends up just falling into a rhythm of life in D.C., getting a job alongside Pete at Nick's place, where business is booming now that he switched over to making it a "colored joint" at a time when segregation was very much still in full swing. Pete finds purpose in helping Mike find his sister. At the same time, Joey comes back into Pete's life when Mr. Burke's organization decides they're going to try to shakedown Nick for "protection money", as they see his business is taking off. All of the story lines (the hunt for Lola, the prostitute murders, the shakedown of Nick, Pete and Joey's friendship, and Pete's search for purpose) all end up converging at the end in one Big Blowdown.
Although there was a lot of "stuff" that happened in this book, it was really more than anything a story about Pete Karras' character. The second most important "character" was likely the setting--both the time and the place. I obviously didn't live during that time, but I came away thinking that Pete's story was representative of what many were experiencing during that time--growing up in a melting pot of a city, in a very tight-knit ethnic (Greek) community, and coming back to find the city and yourself very much changed after WWII. This book was written in 1996, but if someone had told me it was written in the 1940s or 1950s I would have believed them. I feel like Pelecanos nailed the language and the mannerisms of the time. I am very interested in reading the rest of the DC Quartet, along with other books that Pelecanos has written.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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