Bill Ellison should have it all. Son and heir to old DC money, attends Georgetown, destined for law school. His great grandfather founded the first black-owned bank in DC and shrewdly positioned it to become a major DC institution. Billy's mom is as high up in the DC party circuit as one can get and also works for one of DC's most influential power brokers. She's a regular on the White House invitation list.
But Billy ends up dead. Shot once in the head from close range. But it's worse. His body was found floating in a Potomac River inlet off an infected boil on DC's backside. Frenchman's Bend. Where crack, heroin, weed, prostitutes, and guns are the norm, not silver spoon bonus babies. Ground that the South Caps and the M Street Crew want to control.
Sully Carter is a reporter for 'the paper'. Used to be a war correspondent until an assignment went bad forcing his recall to DC. Knows the local cops and suspects that family money and influence are teaming to keep secrets secret by keeping the cops from doing their job. Not only was Billy in the wrong place, he was also gay and dealing drugs on the side. Angles on the story that Sully thinks need to come to light.
Sully may like his drink and his motorcycle, but he can also smell a story and pursues details, injunctions or street games be damned. With each stone turned, another maggot is revealed stripping another piece of veneer from the Ellison name.
This is Tucker's 2nd Sully Carter book. The first was The Ways of the Dead, which I WILL find. Being a DC native, I'm always on the prowl for new DC-based books. For me, the current king of DC crime is George Pelecanos because he excels at making DC a character in his books, both in its geography and street dialogue. Tucker is a long time Washington Post reporter with two award winning non-fiction books to his credit and scores big on both counts, too. Also turns out that Tucker was the inspiration for the war correspondent character in Cuba Libre by the great Elmore Leonard.
People . . . this is serious writing. The plot is layered and twisted, loaded with surprises. You want to know the characters, but the circuitous plot keeps you from being successful at looking ahead. Cook presents dialogue that is street-smart and not forced. So I'm officially adding Tucker to that small class of top shelf writers of DC crime. New readers to Tucker will not be disappointed. Pelecanos and Tucker may not be in a class by themselves, but you can be sure it doesn't take long to take attendance in that class.
available June 30, 2015
East Coast Don
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