Right as Rain by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown, 2001): Signed Association Copy; Derek Strange and Terry Quinn Series Book 1

I'll have news on further eBay auctions very soon, should anyone be interested, but in the meantime I've some more inscribed books I'd like to blog about. Like this one:

An American first edition/first printing of Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos, published by Little, Brown in 2001, dust jacket design by Paul Sahre incorporating a photograph by Michael Northrup. Pelecanos's ninth novel, it's also the first in his three-book series starring Washington, DC cops-turned-private investigators Derek Strange and Terry Quinn (there are a couple more books which feature just Strange), and details how the two met: Strange is hired to look into the shooting incident which left an off-duty black cop dead and saw Quinn leave the force. I liked it a lot, at least as much if not more than the other Pelecanos novels I've read (namely The Way Home, 2009, The Cut, 2011, and What It Was, 2012); it unfolds at a deliberately measured pace and Strange in particular is a compelling creation, a generally decent man whose major fault is an unwillingness to confront his own self-destructive tendencies.

I came across this copy in the bargain basement of Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road, London, at the start of the year, priced at £4 – possibly at oversight on the part of the proprietors, who perhaps overlooked the presence on the title page of Pelecanos's signature and an accompanying inscription – "With admiration" – to his fellow crime novelist John Harvey:

Now, it's fair to say that signed Geoge Pelecanos books aren't exactly hard to come by: AbeBooks alone lists well over a thousand books flat signed by Pelecanos, with prices starting at a few pounds, and I imagine there are hundreds more available on eBay, Amazon Marketplace and on the websites and physical premises of any number of bookshops. (I myself own two flat-signed Pelecanos first editions: the aforementioned What It Was and a 2005 British first edition of Drama City). However, books which have been both signed and inscribed by Pelecanos – if that's the sort of thing which floats your boat (which it does mine) – are in rather shorter supply – there are more like 70 of those listed on AbeBooks at present – and signed and inscribed association copies are positively uncommon, with, as I type, just two such items listed online, one priced at over £150, the other at over £300. So I'm pretty pleased with my four quid score.

By the way, the postcard resting on the 'Also by' page, depicting William H. Johnson's Going to Church, hails from the Smithsonian American Art Institution in Washington, and was slipped inside the book, which makes me wonder whether it was enclosed by Pelecanos himself – being, as he is, a resident of DC – or perhaps by Harvey on a visit to the city; indeed, maybe that's how the book came to be inscribed.*

One of the blurbs on the back of the book is by Elmore Leonard, a writer of whom Pelecanos is an admirer – among his favourites are Valdez is Coming (1970), which actually gets a mention in Right as Rain (Terry Quinn, who's working in a used book store, tells Derek Strange it's "just about the best" western), Swag (1976) and Unknown Man No. 89 (1977; Pelecanos references that one in The Cut) – and also, arguably, his most direct descendant, both stylistically and in terms of subject matter and even characters. (Two of the bad guys in Right as Rain, Ray Boone and his "daddy", Earl, wouldn't be out of place in a Leonard story.) And it's to Leonard that I'll be turning next, with an inscribed copy of a brilliant and unjustly overlooked novel, written in the mid-1970s but not actually published until the mid-1980s.

. . . . . . . . . .

* Addendum: Shortly after I posted this I made contact with John Harvey on Twitter. John confirmed that the postcard was his – "that artist has long been a favourite" – and furthermore that George Pelecanos was also a favourite and that John hadn't intended to part with this copy of Right as Rain at all; it had got mixed up by mistake with a bunch of unwanted books – "rejects & doubles, or so I thought!" – that John sold a year or so ago. In light of which, I've offered to return Right as Rain to John, and John has kindly agreed to inscribe one of his books for me. Exactly which book, I'll reveal down the line.

Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard (Gold Medal, 1970, Frank McCarthy Cover Art): Book Review

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

Let's begin the paperback segment of this seemingly endless series of posts on Elmore Leonard with a western:

Valdez is Coming, published as a paperback original in the States in October 1970 by Fawcett/Gold Medal, cover art by Frank McCarthy. The copy seen here, which I acquired from Alan White Fine Books, is the true American first edition, as evidenced by the 60 cent cover price and the presence on the back of a pair of stills from the 1971 Burt Lancaster-starring movie adaptation:

Which are missing on later printings. So now you know. (In fact the earliest edition of the novel is the British Robert Hale hardback, published in 1969 under a terrible photographic dust jacket, but seeing as the scant few copies of it available online are hideously expensive – at least a grand for a decent one – it's unlikely I'll ever get my hands on one.)  

Valdez is Coming is one of two Leonard novels Gold Medal published when the author resumed his (fiction) writing career in the late 1960s (the other being 1969's The Big Bounce), but it actually started life almost a decade before: the first chapter of the novel was originally a short story, "Only Good Ones", which appeared in Western Roundup at the tail end of the first phase of Leonard's career (when he was writing nothing but westerns) in 1961. (A tip of the hat to Vintage Hardboiled Reads for that info.) Stylistically, though, it's recognisably the work of the Leonard who penned the likes of The Big Bounce and Mr. Majestyk and The Hunted in the late 1960s and throughout the '70s, rather than the Leonard who penned the early westerns: lean, no waste, and with a distinct lack of modifying adverbs.

Certainly Leonard himself thinks so. In a 2009 Goodreads interview he agreed that his style had changed and that "it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humor in it, but also to be more spare in the writing", adding: "[Previously] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." That same year he told The Barnes and Noble Review's James Mustich: "...it was when I was writing Valdez is Coming, I began to see something a little different, that I could get into the character not simply as a hero, but as an individual. That helped me. From then on, I looked more at my characters as human beings, not just this guy wearing a badge, and so on." He also told mystery novelist Jean Henry Mead in a separate interview that he felt Valdez is Coming was his best western novel – a view endorsed by George Pelecanos (among others), who wrote that it was his "favorite Leonard novel, a perfect piece of lean, evocative writing, one hundred and thirty six pages (my Bantam paperback edition) [note: 156 pages in the Gold Medal edition, excluding prelims] of prose containing not one wasted word".

Of the Leonard novels I've read, I wouldn't say Valdez is Coming was my favourite, but it is bloody good. The opening chapter is – as you'd expect, given its origins – essentially a complete story in itself, centring on a standoff at a shack in the scrub country outside the town of Lanoria – a standoff which ends when Bob Valdez, the Mexican constable of Lanoria, is forced to kill the black man mistakenly identified by horse trader and gunrunner Frank Tanner as a murderer and army deserter. Thereafter, figuring Tanner and the other Lanoria grandees owe the man's pregnant Native American widow restitution, Valdez goes to see Tanner and asks him for money; Tanner's response is to have his men, including his segundo (second-in-command), beat Valdez and send him on his way. And when the stubborn Valdez comes back again, he's dealt with even more harshly (the Gold Medal cover art will give you an idea how harshly).

That Valdez's subsequent actions encompass the kidnapping of Tanner's woman, Gay Erin, and the killing of so many men it's hard to keep track (although Valdez does) – and that they in turn mean hardship for his horsebreaker friend, Diego Luz and his family – might lead those unfamiliar with the novel to believe that it is in essence a straightforward tale of revenge. But there's much more to the novel than that. Valdez's motivations – indeed the motivations of all of the major characters, however lightly sketched – are complex and not easily definable, touching on themes of, variously, justice, faith, mortality, hope, determination, friendship, companionship – even, at one stage, alcoholism (a subject Leonard, who around this time was drinking heavily, would return to in 1977's Unknown Man No. 89) and domestic violence. As Leonard puts it at the start of chapter two: "A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now."

And all this in 156 pages – or 136 if you're George Pelecanos – "of lean, evocative writing". In fact, compare Valdez is Coming to some of the westerns Leonard penned in the 1950s and you'd almost think they were the work of two different writers – as we'll discover, in the next Elmore Leonard post.

Four George Pelecanos First Editions: Right as Rain (2001), Hell to Pay (2002), Soul Circus (2003), Shame the Devil (2000)

Let's round off this short run of George Pelecanos posts with a bunch of first editions, all of which I bought in the same London bookshop in summer of last year, and most of which feature one of the leads from Pelecanos's latest novel, What It Was. Beginning with:

A British hardback first edition of Right as Rain, published by Orion in 2001, the same year as the US Little, Brown first edition. This, like all of the books I'll be showcasing in this post, was bought in Henry Pordes on Charing Cross Road in June 2011, during my two-week tour of England's secondhand bookshops (obviously this was during the London leg of the tour). The first editions in Henry Pordes are situated on the ground floor as you enter, but on the spur of the moment I decided to have a quick look in the basement, which is usually stocked with (not especially interesting, before you ask) paperbacks. On this occasion, however, the shop had evidently had a clear-out, because there was a stack of first editions downstairs, all priced at a few quid each, and mostly of a crime fiction bent. And even better, four of 'em were by George Pelecanos.

Naturally, I snapped those four up. None of them are especially scarce or valuable, but they are all in very fine condition, about the best state a person could ever hope to acquire them in, so I was dead chuffed to nab the whole lot for under fifteen quid, especially as each one individually would normally cost about that anyway. Right as Rain is the first in Pelecanos's series starring Washington P.I.s Derek Strange and Terry Quinn – the former of whom, as I indicated in the intro to this post, also features in What It Was (in a much younger incarnation, What It Was being set in 1972). There's a synopsis and excerpt on George Pelecanos's website, and an insightful review of the novel on Rick Kleffel's Agony Column.

And from the first Strange/Quinn outing... to the second:

Hell to Pay, again published in hardback in the UK by Orion, this time in 2002. Not untypically for Orion, the design of the dustjacket is uncredited – Right as Rain's jacket design is similarly uncredited – but the front cover photo is by Ed Holub – and if you're wondering at this point why I didn't tell you who took the photo on the front of Right as Rain, that's because there's no credit for that, either. Hell to Pay is, as I say, the second of Pelecanos's three novels starring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn (Strange of course features in a further two – the aforementioned What It Was, and 2004's Hard Revolution); there's a synopsis and extract on the author's website, and an entertaining and personal review by Karen G. Anderson on the January Magazine site. And to complete the set:

The third Strange/Quinn novel, Soul Circus, published in hardback by Orion in 2003. The cover photo is again by Ed Holub – or "Edward" as he's credited here – and as with the previous two books, you can find a synopsis and excerpt on Pelecanos's site. Reviews aplenty there are of this one online, but you could do a lot worse than the reliable Mark Lawson of The Guardian.

That brings us to the end of the Strange/Quinn segment of this post... and also to the end of the British first editions. Because the final George Pelecanos first I found in Henry Pordes was an American one:

Shame the Devil, published by Little, Brown in the States in 2000. This one is the fourth entry in what's known as the D.C. Quartet – but it's also an entry in the Nick Stefanos series – see also A Firing Offense (1992), Nick's Trip (1993) and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (1995) (and, in briefer appearances, Soul Circus and What It Was) – as Nick features in this one, too. George Pelecanos's website has a synopsis (no extract in this instance, though), but allow me to direct you towards my esteemed friend Olman for a fuller review, including links to reviews of the three prior D.C. Quartet novels. Unlike Orion, Little, Brown are perfectly happy to credit cover designers, and the jacket on this US edition was designed by Tom Brown, utilising a photograph by Joshua Sheldon. And also unlike Orion – and most other British publishers for that matter – Little, Brown have chosen to finish the book with lovely deckled edges – on which nerdily bibliophiliac note it's probably best to draw a line under the Pelecanos posts.

Next on Existential Ennui: a bit of housekeeping, and some links.

Book Review: What It Was, by George Pelecanos; Orion Limited Edition Signed Hardback, 2012

On to the second post in this short George Pelecanos "season" on Existential Ennui. And having reviewed Pelecanos's 2011 novel The Cut, I'm turning now to the second Pelecanos book to have been published in the past six months – in a rather splendid UK-only edition....

Published by Orion on 9 February, this is the British hardback of What It Was, George Pelecanos's eighteenth novel, and the fifth to star Washington, D.C. policeman-turned-P.I. Derek Strange – or rather, co-star; Strange is teamed with fellow investigator Terry Quinn in three of those books, and shares this latest one with two other leads. Before we get into the plot, though, I just wanted to spend a moment on this particular edition of What It Was, because it's a little unusual. For one thing, the format isn't the standard hardback arlin-covered case with dustjacket; there's no jacket, and the case is finished as metallic gold, with that striking blaxploitation-style image (different to the US edition) printed directly onto it. For another, the UK hardback is limited to just a thousand, numbered copies. And finally, each of those thousand, numbered copies is signed by Mr. Pelecanos himself:

Mine's number 137, as you can see. It's an interesting strategy on Orion's part, reflecting recent news of ebook sales apparently eating into hardcover sales, as a result of which many publishers are now seeking to make their hardbacks more desirable as objects. And it certainly did the trick here: ordinarily I tend to hold off buying brand new hardbacks, waiting until I chance across cheaper copies, but in this instance I snapped one up from Amazon as soon as it became available.

I'm glad I did, too, because What It Was is at least the equal of The Cut, and in some respects even better. Set in Washington during the summer of 1972 – also, not entirely coincidentally, when the Watergate scandal broke – it's the story of Robert Lee Jones, a.k.a. Red Fury, a small-time crook who suddenly steps up a league and starts robbing and murdering his way across the city in an attempt to secure his legend. But it's also the story of Derek Strange, not long departed from the D.C. police force following his experiences during the 1968 race riots (as related in 2004's Hard Revolution), now beginning to establish himself as a private investigator and on the hunt for a missing ring; and of Frank Vaughn, alias Hound Dog, the veteran cop on the trail of Red. And over the course of the summer the fates of all three men become intertwined, leading towards a bloody showdown in a forgotten part of the capitol.

I hesitate to use the word "fun" to describe a novel in which lots of people are shot and killed, but in comparison to the gloomy likes of The Way Home (2009) and, to an extent, The Cut, What It Was is practically a knockabout farce. Pelecanos seems to be enjoying himself immensely – he wrote the book fast, in three months – detailing a period of American history when black music and cinema and fashion were all reaching a colourful, superfly crescendo (almost obsessively detailing, in fact: much in the way that The Cut seemed preoccupied with geography and street names, What It Was compulsively catalogues clobber; barely a character is introduced without reference to their "stacks" and "bells"). In a note at the start of the book Pelecanos reveals that What It Was began life as a much more weighty Watergate novel – one the author "had no great desire to write" – and elements of that intended work do make it over to What It Was, notably a fleeting appearance from a real life, key (but ultimately tragic) player in the scandal. Thankfully, however, What It Was wears its history – its own and the era it documents – lightly; it's the characters that matter here.

And those characters all feel so alive, both in the sense of being rounded and believable, and in that they're open to the possibilities and opportunities of the epoch they're living through: Strange striking out on his own as a P.I.; Vaughn revelling in the job he loves (and is damn good at, despite what the suits believe); Red violently carving out his place in history. Unlike the bad guys in other Pelecanos books, though, Jones isn't a completely monstrous creation (a visiting mobster – with imbecilic partner in tow – fills that role this time): he's merciless, sure, but also charismatic, engendering unquestioning loyalty in both his girlfriend, Coco, and his right-hand man, Alfonzo Jefferson. Certainly Vaughn, for one, understands and even respects Red's motives; as the detective tells Strange: "The clock ticks. You get toward the finish line, you realize that what's important is the name you leave behind... Red Jones gets it."

That notion of leaving a mark on history is reinforced by the novel's framing device, which features Derek Strange in a bar in the here and now telling the tale of Red Jones and Frank Vaughn (and himself) to a character from a different Pelecanos series: Nick Stefanos, star of A Firing Offense (1992), Nick's Trip (1993) and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (1995). Strange and Stefanos have known each other for a while – Nick made a guest appearance in the last "contemporary" Strange novel, 2003's Soul Circus – but in the closing moments of this latest drinking session, Pelecanos seems to be suggesting that not only has their legend yet to be written... but that it'll be a legend shared.

And speaking of Soul Circus, that novel and its two fellow Derek Strange/Terry Quinn outings will form the basis of my third and final Pelecanos post, in which I'll be looking at first editions of all three books...

The Cut (Reagan Arthur / Orion, 2011) by George Pelecanos: Book Review

(NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.)

It's been a while since I blogged about American author George Pelecanos; the last time I did so at any length was back in November 2010, although I did mention him in passing in this review of Richard Price's The Wanderers last year. But it just so happens that I've recently read two of Pelecanos's novels in quick succession – and since I also have a bunch of others of his books still waiting to be blogged about, I thought I'd gather all of that together for a short run of Pelecanos posts, beginning with a review of a novel which made it to the number 9 spot in my 10 Best Books I Read in 2011 chart:

The Cut, first published in 2011 by Reagan Arthur in the US and Orion in the UK (which is the edition you can see above). Now, I've a particular reason for cross-posting this review on The Violent World of Parker, as well as on Existential Ennui. I mean, George Pelecanos being ostensibly a crime novelist, and Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark being an acknowledged influence on Pelecanos, obviously there's a certain amount of crossover anyway. But on top of that there's an explicit nod to Westlake's work in The Cut, one which will bring a smile to every Parker appreciator's face.

I'll return to that shortly, but first, the novel itself. The initial offering in a projected new series from Pelecanos, The Cut stars Spero Lucas, a young private investigator based in Washington, D.C. Except Spero isn't, in the strictest sense, an investigator; he's actually more of a finder. For a percentage of whatever it is he's recovering, Spero will track down lost or stolen property, whether that property be legit or otherwise. Spero's latest case sees him tasked with retrieving a package of marijuana, which was delivered via FedEx to a suburban address (a popular way of importing drugs, apparently) and then promptly stolen before the lieutenants working for the owner of the weed, Anwan Hawkins (who is currently languishing in jail), could get to it. In the course of the ensuing investigation, Spero finds himself tangling with a gang of ruthless killers and a corrupt cop, in the process unwittingly causing the kidnapping of a schoolboy...

I mentioned above that George Pelecanos is (ostensibly) a crime writer, but in truth his books are really only crime fiction in the way that, say, The Wire is crime fiction. Like that groundbreaking TV show – for which Pelecanos wrote, of course (and continues to do so for Treme, The Wire creator David Simon's follow-up) – while there is lawlessness in Pelecanos's books, that's only one strand of their genetic make-up. At root, Pelecanos is a chronicler of contemporary urban America – especially Washington, his home town – with all that that entails: criminal activity, obviously, but also the city's bars, restaurants, parks, police, neighbourhoods and people – working class, middle class, underclass, and all points in-between.

I've never been to Washington, but so effectively does Pelecanos convey the sights and sounds, smells and tastes of the place that, should I ever find myself there, I'll probably experience an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. (I'll certainly be seeking out one of the delicious-sounding breakfasts Spero indulges in.) Indeed, so detailed are Pelecanos's descriptions of Washington's streets, blocks and corners in the novel that occasionally the experience is akin to reading an A-Z. Curiously, though, despite this seemingly slavish attention to detail, the geography isn't always accurate: my good and learned friend Book Glutton – a resident of D.C. – reports that some of the boundaries, bars and street numbers in The Cut are a little off – and also that some aspects of the police work depicted are inaccurate.

These are minor quibbles, however, to be chalked up to either artistic license or possibly deliberate obfuscation in order to protect real people and places: more importantly, Book Glutton reckons that The Cut brilliantly captures what it's like to live in Washington, and to me it felt utterly convincing: a vivid picture of a city largely recovered from the years of gang violence which blighted it, but still with its problems. It's also, I'd venture, a better book than Pelecanos's previous novel, The Way Home, which, though good, featured a pair of villains who'd apparently wandered in from a completely different story. By contrast, the bad guys in The Cut are integrated in a much more organic fashion, and in Spero Lucas, Pelecanos has the kind of intriguing protagonist that The Way Home lacked. Adopted and raised by a Greek family, an Iraq War veteran who's pretty handy in a fight (look out for a brutal, desperate hand-to-hand struggle in a vacant lot), Spero isn't without his flaws – he has a tendency to follow his dick around, for one thing – but he's an engaging lead, and having learned some hard lessons by the close of the novel he emerges as a character who should easily sustain a series.

As for that Westlake/Stark connection, that comes three-quarters of the way into the novel, in scene in which Spero's adoptive brother, Leo, is teaching a public high school English lesson. The book Leo has chosen for his class is the debut Parker outing, The Hunter (in an '80s Avon edition, no less), and the discussion around the novel is lively and entertaining, the unruly kids finding Parker a compelling creation. But there's one kid in class, Ernest, who's a real movie buff, and in Ernest's thoughts on which is the best Parker movie, the guiding hand of Pelecanos the Westlake fan can be clearly seen.

Pelecanos seems to be on something of a roll at the moment: The Cut only arrived in August of last year, and yet the author has already had another novel published in the interim. And in the next Pelecanos post, I'll be reviewing that novel, in a highly collectible British edition...

2011, a Review of the Year in Books and Comics, 3: the 10 Best Books I Read This Year

And so we reach the grand finale of my not-as-drawn-out-as-last-year's effort-but-still-quite-long-enough-thank-you end-of-year round-up – not to mention also, not entirely coincidentally, my final post for the year; hang out the bunting, begin the ticker-tape parade, etc., etc. And having presented a Bloody Great List of all the books I read in 2011, to round the year off I'm going to choose my ten favourite books from that list. I bet you literally cannot contain your excitement.

As I did last year, I've once again opted for a top ten this time out, rather than a top twenty, a decision which has necessitated some hard choices. I could have easily filled getting on for half of the top ten with Anthony Price novels alone, but for the sake of variety I've limited myself instead to just one appearance per author in the chart. Mind you, there were still a number of authors who didn't quite make the cut but whose work I enjoyed immensely in 2011, and therefore honourable mentions must go to Jeremy Duns (Free Agent), Adam Hall (The Berlin Memorandum), Graham Greene (The Quiet American), Michael Dibdin (Ratking), Donald Hamilton (Death of a Citizen) and Elmore Leonard (Pronto).

This being Existential Ennui and not, I dunno, Shots or The Rap Sheet or Books and Writers or something, it almost goes without saying that the majority of the books in the final ten are, by definition, "old", i.e. first published at least thirty years ago in most cases. But there are a couple of more recent novels in there too, and as I've stated more than once before, although the remainder may be getting on a bit, to me they're as fresh and exciting and surprising as anything published in 2011 – more so in most cases.

So which of the forty-eight books I read in 2011 made the top ten? Let's find out, shall we, by way of a visual guide, counting 'em down in reverse order, with links to whatever nonsense I wrote about each book (if indeed I have written anything yet). Drum roll, please!

10.

SS-GB (1978) by Len Deighton

9.

The Cut (2011) by George Pelecanos

8.

When Will There be Good News? (2008) by Kate Atkinson

7.

A Hive of Glass (1965) by P. M. Hubbard

6.

The Fools in Town are on Our Side (1970) by Ross Thomas

5.

Smiley's People (1979) by John le Carré

4.

Butcher's Moon (1974) by Richard Stark

3.

Undertow (1962) by Desmond Cory

2.

The Alamut Ambush (1971) by Anthony Price

1.

Operation Overkill (1962) by Dan J. Marlowe

Well, one or two surprises there, I feel, especially the books at numbers 3 and 1; suffice it to say that, although they haven't yet featured on Existential Ennui, Desmond Cory and Dan J. Marlowe will be making appearances on this blog very soon indeed. As for the rest, I don't have much to add to my original reviews, except in the cases of George Pelecanos's The Cut, where I haven't yet written a review – there'll be one in the new year – and Kate Atkinson's When Will There be Good News?, which I somehow neglected to review. So let me just quickly note that, while I love all four of Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, I think this one is my favourite, packing, as it does, a real emotional punch and featuring a completely unexpected central disaster. Utterly sublime.

And that's yer lot for 2011. Have a terrific New Year's Eve, and do join me again early in 2012, when I'll be posting a preview of forthcoming delights here on Existential Ennui...

Richard Price, The Wanderers and a Review of the 1975 Chatto & Windus First Edition

I've got three posts on chronicler of urban decay/crime author Richard Price planned for this week – two of them focusing on the same book. Fear not: there is some method to my madness... or at least, I think there is; for all I know there might simply be madness to my madness. We shall find out in the fullness of time. But before we get to that book, let's begin with a look at Price's debut novel:

The Wanderers was first published in the US in 1974 by Houghton Mifflin (1975 Chatto & Windus UK first edition seen above, with its Graham Palfrey-Rogers-designed pop art/collage dustjacket). Price was just twenty-five when it was published and the book draws heavily on his own experiences growing up in New York's projects in the early 1960s. The specific year is never nailed down in the novel, but the songs, bands and artists mentioned – Little Stevie Wonder, Dion, etc. – place it around that early '60s period. The focal point of the book is the eponymous Italian teenage gang, primarily Richie Gennaro, High Warlord of the Warriors, and his friends Buddy Borsalino, Eugene Caputo, Joey Capra and Perry La Guardia.

In fact The Wanderers is more like a collection of short stories than a novel. There's no overarching plot to speak of; each chapter is titled but not numbered ("The Warlord", "The Party", etc.), and though main and supporting characters reappear throughout the book and previous events are referenced, you could lift any chapter out of the whole and it would stand on its own. The theme, however, is the same throughout: what it's like to be a teenager in a city – bored with school and consumed by nihilistic preoccupations like fighting, fucking, drinking and fooling about.

And there's plenty of all of the above in the book; all bases are covered by the time we get to the end of the third chapter, "The Game", which features a massive ruck at an inter-gang football match. Price is brilliant at capturing the excitement of the fight, but also the sheer terror of it, and the same is true of the Wanderers' various attempts to get laid (some more successful than others). By concentrating in each chapter on a different gang member, he gets inside their heads, detailing the confusion and frustration and joy and ennui of being a teenager, contrasting all that with the outward bravado and braggadocio of their frequently funny conversations as they trade (friendly) insults and sometimes (less friendly) blows.

In a sense, despite the violence that permeates it, The Wanderers depicts a more innocent time in inner city life. There are no drugs or guns, and while there are deaths, these come not at the hands of the Wanderers but mostly by misadventure. Richie, Joey et al are innocents; they're kids, prone to tears when they find themselves in truly scary situations, such as when they're caught up in a bowling alley scam in the "The Hustle", acting merely as bystanders to a brutal punishment meted out by their elders to the visiting ringers. And inevitably, inexorably, all of the Wanderers sense their relatively carefree time hanging out at Big Playground is drawing to a close, as graduation approaches and the concerns of the adult world bear down on them: jobs, marriage, pregnancy, moving on. When the five friends go their separate ways at the end of the story it becomes clear that what the book really is is a eulogy for Price's own childhood.

The Wanderers feels authentic in the same way that George Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane's novels feel authentic: it's an evocation of a specific time and place, no doubt embellished, but essentially truthful. Price has continued to plough this furrow through a further seven novels, to critical acclaim and respectable sales, although those who followed in his footsteps have perhaps reaped the greater rewards. (It's notable that when Pelecanos and Lehane were drafted in to write for The Wire, it was at their behest that Price was brought in too.) Indeed, more recently Price agreed to write a series of detective novels, apparently reasoning that the financial gain of a one-a-year genre work will outweigh his more weighty, research-heavy once-every-five-years tales of urban realism. And who can blame him?

It was actually via The Wire that I became aware of Price (as was also the case with Lehane and Pelecanos), but I was already familiar with some of the movie adaptations of his books even if I didn't really know his name. The best-known of those is probably Spike Lee's 1995 version of Clockers – and it's that novel I'll be looking at next, in two rather special editions...

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane: Little, Brown Uncorrected Bound Proof

Way back at the start of November, when the weather was still balmy and snow was a distant prospect, I dedicated a whole week's worth of posts to Dennis Lehane (with a few guest appearances from George Pelecanos) and his series of novels starring Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Partly that was because Lehane's latest Kenzie-Gennaro novel – and the first in over ten years – Moonlight Mile, was published in the States that week, but mostly it was because I'd recently picked up a job lot of US first editions of the five novels before it on eBay. That's how much thought goes into those themed weeks on Existential Ennui...

Anyway, Moonlight Mile isn't due to be published in the UK until February, by Lehane's new publisher, Little, Brown. I wondered in this post on Gone, Baby, Gone (which Moonlight Mile is a sequel to) how Little, Brown would handle their UK publicity and press campaign for Moonlight Mile, given that Lehane isn't as big a name over here as he is in the US and also that the new novel is the sixth book in a series, none of the previous books from which were published by Little, Brown. And as it happens, I can now answer those questions.

This is the uncorrected bound proof of Little, Brown's forthcoming UK edition of Moonlight Mile. If you don't know what a bound proof is, it's an advanced copy of a novel produced for press and publicity purposes.

There's the copyright info inside the book. Basically it looks like a trade paperback, except without a barcode or price on the back cover, and with different cover blurb too. (I blogged about a Patricia Highsmith one back in July.) For instance, I doubt that tag line on the front cover "An exciting new era for one of the world's great writers" will make it on to the final version – nor indeed the tiny "NOT FOR SALE..." line above it either... And if we turn to the back cover...

We start to get a sense of Little, Brown's strategy for the book. Right at the top, in bold, white type, the publisher announces this is Lehane's first novel for them, which sets the context for what's to follow. And then the first bullet point underneath does what any publicity department in their right mind should do when plugging Dennis Lehane: it mentions The Wire. Because here in Britain, it's for his writing on The Wire that Lehane's best known – the caveat there being, as adored as The Wire is in certain sections of British society, those sections are, in the grand scheme of things, quite small. But UK Wire fans are passionate, and media-savvy, and so playing up that angle is a solid start.

The next bullet point down does the next most obvious thing one should do when plugging Dennis Lehane, and that's to talk about Shutter Island. The 2010 Martin Scorcese movie adaptation of Shutter Island did decent business at cinemas, both in the US, where it earned $128 million, and in the UK, where it earned about £11 million. Eleven million pounds may not sound like a lot (relatively speaking), but that's a good number for a film over here. So again, that's a useful angle for promotion... even if the back cover copywriter did get the year of the film wrong. Interesting to see too the 100,000 UK sales of the novel, although presumably that's since the book's original UK publication in 2003.

And then in the last two bullet points we get a nod to Gone, Baby, Gone, a tease for a future movie adaptation of Moonlight Mile (that's a new one on me; they might need to change the title for that), and a quote from The Guardian, the newspaper of choice for the discerning fan of The Wire. Personally I'm not sure about that line in bold white type about either loving Lehane or not having read him – I feel slightly lectured to there – but it's publicity we're talking about here, and therefore subtlety isn't always an option.

So, in broad strokes, that's how Little, Brown are promoting the book. There's some more info on the accompanying press release:

Along with a couple more press quotes, and a short synopsis. It also repeats that unfortunate mistake about Shutter Island being one of the biggest grossing films of 2009 (it was 2010). But that's a minor niggle. Overall, Little, Brown have done a creditable job. I don't know what more they could have done to pave the way for Moonlight Mile, and I wish them and Lehane luck for the book's UK launch next year. I think it'll do pretty well for them.

The Kenzie and Gennaro Novels: Prayers for Rain (First Edition)

It's the final post in Lehane/Pelecanos Week (cue ecstatic cheering from single remaining reader – no slight intended on messers Lehane and Pelecanos, you understand; rather my vacuous posts about them), which grinds to a halt a whole day early (or even three days if you count Saturday and Sunday). And to round things off, we have this:

The US hardback first edition/first impression of Prayers for Rain, published by William Morrow in 1999. It is, you'll be astonished to learn, Dennis Lehane's fifth novel, and also the fifth in his Kenzie-Gennaro series, and it came from the same seller who sold me the previous four books in the series. So basically, I turned a job lot of Lehane first editions I won on eBay – plus a couple of stray George Pelecanos books – into a week's worth (well, almost) of blog posts. I think the lesson there is, it's probably unwise to spend (nearly) a week blogging about a series of novels that you've only read the first one-and-a-quarter of, as you'll quickly run out of interesting things to say about them. Aaaanyway. Too late for regrets; what's done is done; we are where we are, and other irritating platitudes. This time out, Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are somewhat estranged following the wrenching events of Gone, Baby, Gone, so it's down to a solo Kenzie to investigate the apparent suicide of a former client.

As with Gone, Baby, Gone, this American edition of Prayers for Rain was designed by Cathryn S. Aison, and the jacket designed by Bradford Foltz. That rather lovely photograph on the front cover is by Judah S. Harris, who, as well as providing stock photos to cover designers, also takes pictures of, as his website puts it, "Jewish life and the human experience"; there are some fantastic examples of his photojournalism here, as well as some ravishing landscape and reportage pictures here.

And that, you'll be pleased to hear, is that for Dennis Lehane for the moment. Next up on Existential Ennui... actually I'm not sure what is next up on Existential Ennui. I've got a bunch of random hardbacks to blog about, including a couple of Westlake Scores; a stack of crime and thriller paperbacks, some of which I picked up at the Paperback and Pulp Fair in London last weekend, including some Richard Stark and Peter Rabe; and a truckload of Ross Thomas first editions, among them a couple of absolutely killer Beverly Lebarrow covers. Oh, and there's another Notes from the Small Press on the way too, not to mention a Parker Progress Report and a Grofield File. In fact, y'know what? Maybe we'll have that last one next...