George P. Pelecanos

Author Information
George P. Pelecanos's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    25 Books (4 Series)
  • First Book:
    April 1992
  • Latest Book:
    May 2024
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Full Series List in Order

Marcus Clay & Dimitri Karras

1 - King Suckerman (Aug-1997)
2 - The Sweet Forever (Aug-1998)
3 - Shame the Devil (Jan-2000)

Nick Stefanos

1 - A Firing Offense (Apr-1992)
2 - Nick's Trip (Mar-1993)
3 - Shoedog (May-1994)
4 - Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (Jun-1995)
5 - The Big Blowdown (Jun-1996)

PI Derek Strange

1 - What It Was (Feb-2012)
2 - Right as Rain (Feb-2001)
3 - Hell to Pay (Mar-2002)
4 - Soul Circus (Mar-2003)
5 - Hard Revolution (Jan-2004)

Spero Lucas

1 - The Cut (Sep-2011)
2 - The Double (Oct-2013)

Book List in Order: 25 titles

  • A Firing Offense

    Nick Stefanos - 1

    As the advertising director of Nutty Nathan's, Nick Stefanos knows all the tricks of the electronics business. Blow-out sales and shady deals were his life. When one of the stockboys disappears, it's not news: just another metalhead who went off chas...

  • Nick's Trip

    Nick Stefanos - 2

    Nick Stefanos has given up his job in sales to tend bar at the Spot, where drinks and women are both a bit too easily available, and the routine is starting to feel as dead-end as his last gig. But things are about to change. First, his high-school f...

  • Shoedog

    Nick Stefanos - 3

    From "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world" (Esquire) comes this powerful early novel--the noirish story of how a Washington, D.C., liquor store heist shows a drifter named Constantine what it means to be a shoedog....

  • Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

    Nick Stefanos - 4

    "You already been a punk. Least you can do is go out like a man." Then a dull popping sound and a quiet splash. In his third appearance in George Pelecanos's acclaimed series, Nick Stefanos has been spending too much time with bad women and bad boo...

  • The Big Blowdown

    Nick Stefanos - 5

    For Joey Recevo and Pete Karras, two kids from one of Washington's rougher neighborhoods, the easiest work to find after the War is all criminal---providing a little muscle for a local boss. But Karris is soft on his fellow immigrants, and the bos...

  • King Suckerman

    Marcus Clay & Dimitri Karras - 1

    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 ...

  • The Sweet Forever

    Marcus Clay & Dimitri Karras - 2

    It's March madness. And the college boys are playing basketball on TV. But on the streets of D.C., the homeboys are dealing, dissing, dying. From behind plate glass, with an 80s backbeat pounding in his brain, Marcus Clay watches it all happen, and p...

  • Shame the Devil

    Marcus Clay & Dimitri Karras - 3

    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 ...

  • Right as Rain

    PI Derek Strange - 2

    A YOUNG POLICEMAN IS DEAD and the bullet that killed him came from another policeman's gun. Derek Strange, a former cop who now runs his own private detective agency, is hired to investigate: the mother of the victim wants Strange to clear up lingeri...



  • Hell to Pay

    PI Derek Strange - 3

    Derek Strange has a thing for old vinyl, Cadillacs, and the massage parlors he can't quite leave behind. Terry Quinn drinks too much beer and spends too many nights watching trains go by. Friends, detectives, and veterans of a world gone wrong, Stran...

  • Soul Circus

    PI Derek Strange - 4

    Granville Oliver is a drug lord on trial for his life. Derek Strange is the private investigator, family man, and Pee Wee Football coach with his own reasons for helping him. With his quick-tempered partner Terry Quinn keeping him sharp, and the old-...

  • Hard Revolution

    PI Derek Strange - 5

    It was a time when cars came dressed in chrome, white girls followed the Supremes, and a man in Memphis brandished a gun. On the streets of D.C., where once people of all creeds and colors managed to live together, a tide of anger and confusion is ta...

  • Drama City

    Lorenzo Brown loves his work. As an officer for the Humane Society, it is his job to cruise the city streets, looking for dogs that are being mistreated - underfed, unclean, trained to kill. He takes pride in making their lives better. And that pride...

  • The Night Gardener

    The haunting story of three copsone good, one bad, one brokenand the murder that reunites them in a showdown decades in the making. Gus Ramone is good police, a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the citys Violent Crime bra...

  • String Music

    in Penguin Book of Crime Stories

    International bestselling author Peter Robinson turns his razor-sharp instinct for crime writing to this unique anthology featuring the cream of crime fiction. With a selection of 15 stories featuring established bestsellers and new voices, The Pengu...

  • The Turnaround

    On a hot summer afternoon in 1972, three teenagers drove into an unfamiliar neighborhood and six lives were altered forever. Thirty five years later, one survivor of that day reaches out to another, opening a door that could lead to salvation. But a...

  • The Way Home

    Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a steady job in his father's company, he's seriously dating a woman he respects, and, aside from the distru...

  • The Cut

    Spero Lucas - 1

    Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut...

  • What It Was

    PI Derek Strange - 1

    Washington, D.C., 1972. Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a private investigator. His former partner, Frank "Hound Dog" Vaughn, is still on the force. When a young woman comes to Strange asking for his help recovering a ...



  • The Double

    Spero Lucas - 2

    Every man has his dark side...Spero Lucas confronts his own in the most explosive thriller yet from one of America's best-loved crime writers. The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting--"The Double"--Grace Kinkaid's ex-boyfriend ...

  • The Martini Shot

    Short stories and a novella from one of crime fiction's most revered writers. Whether they're cops or conmen, savage killers or creative types, gangsters or God-fearing citizens, George Pelecanos' characters are always engaged in a fight for their...

  • The Martini Shot and Other Stories

  • The Man Who Came Uptown

    In bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer George Pelecanos' thrilling new novel, an ex-con must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to ...

  • Owning Up

    Four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence, and humanity; "Every time I read one of George Pelecanos's novels, I'm left a little awed."(Dennis Lehane) When the son of the Carusos is involved in a hold up, the family home c...

  • Buster

    Pelecanos breaks new literary ground with the story of a dog's life -- from the dog's perspective -- on the mean streets of Washington, DCEVER WONDER WHAT GOES ON IN THE MIND OF A DOG? Buster: A Dog is the story of one dog's lifelong journey, as told...

Award-Winning Books by George P. Pelecanos

Hell to Pay
2002 L.A. Times Book Prize -- Mystery/Thriller
The Turnaround
2008 Hammett -- Best Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

George P. Pelecanos has published 25 books.

The next book by George P. Pelecanos, Buster, will be published in May 2024.

The first book by George P. Pelecanos, A Firing Offense, was published in April 1992.

Yes. George P. Pelecanos has 4 series.
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