β Scribed by George Pelecanos
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Bestseller Pelecanos (_The Turnaround_) probes the volatile and fragile relationship between a father, Thomas Flynn, and his son, Chris, in this less than satisfying effort. As a rebellious teen into drugs, Chris had minor brushes with the law and did a stint in juvenile prison. Now 26, he's working for his father's D.C.-area carpet installation business and staying clean. Still, Thomas remains disappointed in his son's lack of achievement or ambition, and Chris remains resentful that he's not accepted for who he is. A rather tired device, a bag of stolen money found by Chris and a friend and fellow former inmate, serves to set in motion a chain of actions that will lead to critical decisions for both Flynns. Pelecanos adroitly sketches the obstacles and temptations that face juvenile offenders in and after prison, but this novel, with its dispassionate style, never manages to generate high suspense or evoke much sympathy for its characters. Author tour. (May)
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Notions of revenge, redemption, and justice fuel this thriller, set in Washington, D.C. After a stint in juvenile hall, Chris Flynn sets out to turn his life around, taking a job as a carpet installer for his father, a flooring supplier, despite their contentious relationship. When Chris and a friend find fifty thousand dollars hidden beneath the floorboards at a job site, they must contend with a pair of sadistic ex-cons eager to reclaim the money, stolen during a jewelry heist years earlier. Despite its hard-charging elements, the story unfolds almost languidly, and it is clear that Pelecanos, a seasoned novelist and a writer for The Wire, means to provoke more than quickened heartbeats. His passionate advocacy for juvenile-prison reformand his well-reasoned argument that a poorly run system can punish petty offenders far more severely than their crimes meritoccasionally turns the plot into a polemic.
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