Book Details
| Title: | A Firing Offense | |
| Author: | George Pelecanos | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 01.27.07 |
Other Books Read By This Author (16)
- The Big Blowdown
- The Cut
- Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
- Drama City
- Hard Revolution
- King Suckerman
- The Man Who Came Uptown
- The Martini Shot
- Nick's Trip
- The Night Gardener
- Shame the Devil
- Shoedog
- The Sweet Forever
- The Turnaround
- The Way Home
- What it Was
| Date Read | Note |
| 01.27.07 | Pelecanos' first book. I think I'm gonna read his first trilogy of books following the character Nick Stefanos. Initially, I kind of put this idea off, since it sounded so much like Stefanos was clearly a placeholder for Pelecanos himself but now that I consider myself a fan of the author, I figured it was time to visit his early stuff. The most marked difference in style here is that it's first person and all told from a single point of view. You don't get the converging characters and wonderful way that Pelecanos gets into everybody's head with different voices. Therefore, the book reads much more like a standard private eye mystery novel... except there are large parts of the book that have nothing to do with the case. Instead, it feels like real fantasy fulfillment. The main character spends the first hundred or so pages working for an electronics retailer, first as management then spending a few days on the sales floor. Then he gets fired (as the title suggests) and goes down to Carolina... the beach, outer banks, all that stuff... and it's written like heaven on Earth. He has these very visceral experiences and really lives life for about a week. It's both every 9-5-ers dream of leaving the boring rigid structure of a career behind and going fishing and a great way to explain the draw of Nick not getting another plain old job after this. It's a good book. I liked reading it. But it's clear that it's also an early book. It sticks a lot to standards of the genre that he later leaves completely behind. |
 |