The Man Who Came Uptown by George Pelecanos

Mulholland, 272 pages, $27

George Pelecanos is pretty well known at this point in his career, both as a novelist and as a television producer and writer. His strong suit is depicting life on the tough streets of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. His characters may appear to be morally ambiguous, but ultimately, they do what’s right. Music and sports provide a backdrop for his characters, giving them a time frame and a culture.

Some of the characters Pelecanos created in other books (Derek Strange, Nick Stephanos) show up here in teasing one-liners, references rather than in the flesh. They all inhabit the same universe. Washington, D.C., at this point is a mixture of the old inhabitants, mostly black, and the new incomers, Latin or middle class white. There is a shift in the economics of some neighborhoods but the criminal element still hides in the shadows.

Phil Ornazian is a D.C. private eye. He hustles to keep his family afloat. It’s important to him to provide for his beloved wife and two young sons. And that is what leads him to cross the line one day. He convinces himself that he is more like Robin Hood than a guy robbin’ the hood. He only steals from the nasty and corrupt. The money he gets from stealing a dealer’s cash stash is thus rationalized.

Michael Hudson was in jail for a failed armed robbery. While in jail he learned to love reading because of the jail’s excellent librarian, Anna Kaplan. Somehow Ornazian, Michael’s former investigator, manages to get all charges dropped. This time, Michael swears, he won’t disappoint his mother and siblings. He gets a job washing dishes and, although it is boring, he is determined to use it as a stepping stone to staying straight. He uses an empty bookcase to hold his growing collection of books that open his eyes to the nature of human feelings.

At a later point Ornazian will come to collect his payment for getting Hudson off. At a later point thoughtful decisions must be made. In the meantime, we get character studies of Ornazian, Michael, and one of Ornazian’s friends, retired D.C. police officer Thaddeus Ward, who now runs Ward Bonds,* a bail bonds place.

As with most of Pelecanos’ stories, “The Man Who Came Uptown” steers a straight story path, but it is enriched by his characterizations and love of detail. For instance,

Anna had her hair down and was wearing mostly black and a pair of distressed short Frye boots. Rick [her husband] was wearing his gear: track pants, a white pullover sporting the Callaway logo, and gray New Balance 990s.

Doesn’t that tell you a lot about Anna and her husband and what their relationship must be like?

Again, here’s another passage:

The following morning Terry Kelly woke up to the sounds of his phone alarm and the hard-core thrash of a band called Storm.

That’s that loser character in a nutshell.

As always, if you love Pelecanos, here’s more of him to love.

*  Ward (and Pelecanos) shows his age by punning off the name of a long-ago actor, Ward Bond, late of TV’s “Wagon Train” and many Westerns and B movies. Pelecanos likes to throw in jokes like that.