Lehane v. Pelecanos. v. Price

Lehane's royalty here at the university – a former student, etc. Never read Pelecanos. I'd go with Price for the quality of the dialogue.

Of these, I've only read a Pelecanos book (the Night Gardener) and I thought it was pretty lame. If either of the others beat him in the poll, I'll try them out though.

pretty easy choice of Richard Price for me; "Clockers" and everything he's written since has been excellent. Not a fan of his early novels though.

I'm not in love with Pelecanos or Lehane. I've only read two by Lehane, one of which ("Shutter Island") was dreck and the other ("Prayers for Rain") was a pretty compelling but ridiculous potboiler. I've read a few by Pelecanos, and while I think he's a good writer, he has some stylistic tics that really get on my nerves (e.g. namedropping every musician/band that his characters are listening to) and his morality is a lot more obvious than the other two. I'd say Pelecanos is the better stylist but Lehane is more fun to read.

Pelecanos seems to be a real nice guy but I think his writing is over-rated. He used to try too hard to drop in topical DC area references-names of radio stations and songs and other cultural stuff--it read forced to me.

Price and Pelecanos have done tv script writing for David Simon (of Wire and Treme fame)

Oops, that last point is mentioned right up top.

And n/a mentioned my other point. Oops.

Price was classic when he did the small scale coming-of-age thing ca. Ladies Man and The Breaks. his later social/crime novels are good but not great

Price

i've only read one by pelecanos and one by price, i think. 'the turnaround' was dece but 'lush life' is amazing.

Lush Life is awesome.

Price is going to walk away with this.

Tough call between Lehane and Price - the first couple of novels in the Gone Baby Gone series were excellent thrillers, progressively got pulpier (in a bad way, more Patricia Cornwell less midcentury crime), and I really liked a collection of his short fiction.

I've only read Blood Brothers and Samaritan from Price, but they were solid.

I've tried reading Pelecanos a couple of times and couldn't make it through the first half of either book.

Price in a heartbeat. Clockers, Mad Dog and Glory, Lush Life, what more do you want?
Pelecanos is doing good work and might be approaching Price.
Lehane, I don't know about this guy. I loved Mystic River, but have been really disappointed in everything else except Coronado, his recent collection of short stories, which is quite good.

bonus reason to vote for Price: http://bigthink.com/jonathanames#ooid=hoY3Z5Ohu8ehq0eYXCyRz9Gq2aXxvx76

also, calling these guys neo-noir is a bit of a disservice. Not even Pelecanos, who is the most stylistically self-conscious of the three, really fits that tag.

What's the Jonathan Ames connection, Dr. Superman?

Price by a longshot. He doesn't rush the story and doesn't play as many cutesy tricks (name dropping, stock characters) as Pelecanos. I even enjoyed Freedomland from start to finish.

Ames took a class from Price at Columbia after Ames's first book, and in a roundabout way led Ames to what would become The Extra Man. Per Ames, Price asked him, "well, do you like cops?"

Freedomland is almost Price doing Pelecanos.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Wow, i actually thought of doing this poll at one point. It's definitely Price though. Recently read Blood Brothers and was blown away by it. I love his post-Clockers stuff but there's a sense of life and fun (despite some of the heavy subject matter) in the earlier books which is just really invigorating. His dialogue is A+ always.

Did not know he screenplayed Shaft2000. Maybe I'll watch that.

Read everything by Pelecanos and Price, and a bit of Lehane. So if you're asking who's the best "neo-noir" novelist, I'd say Pelecanos, though there's a sentimental streak a mile wide running through him. Think his portrayal of DC across generations is thorough and convincing, and I like the fact he's interested in and empathetic towards a variety of people. If you're asking who's the best writer, I'd say Price. His early novels are terrific - really undervalued. The run of the past 15 years is more problematic - Clockers is amazing (surely that must have been a part-inspiration for The Wire), Lush Life is very good. However, Freedomland and the one whose name I forget (The Samaritan? Something like that?) are pretty woebegone. Lehane, from what I've read, is nowhere the near the class of either - he writes character types, rather than character.

But George V Higgins was better than any of them. If you like Pelecanos or Lehane, buy The Friends of Eddie Coyle and marvel. Greatest thriller opening line ever: "Jackie Brown at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns."

Pelecanos. Price: I enjoyed the Wanderers, but actually Clockers didn't grip as much as I anticipated. Lehane: good but schlocky.

xpost

funny you should mention Higgins, I read Eddie Coyle after seeing the movie this spring and have been searching his other books - mostly OOP and hard to find. the NYPL has later ones: At End Of Day, The Agent, A Choice of Enemies, The Mandeville Talent. His style is so unique but I have to admit he can get bogged down in dialogue, Eddie Coyle is much leaner and faster-paced than the four I mentioned (though End of Day is a semi-return to form and sadly his last). would like to read his 70s stuff, and still, I might rank Higgins over Elmore Leonard - when he's on the effect is hypnotic, you really get pulled into the characters' spiels.

poll-wise I vote Price. I like Pelecanos but feel he's become overly formulaic in recent years. I miss the characters from his breakout work like King Suckerman. Mystic River was good but the other Lehane novels I've read were same-y in terms of plot and I couldn't get into the detective couple.

Clockers didn't grip as much as I anticipated

Same here; I thought Spike did a better job with Clockers, esp. since it cut out all the bits with the detective. Still, Samaritan was my first and favorite Price (also have read Lush Life, and would alone give me the nod over the other two between whom I've only read Drama City, so, uh, never mind...

Price. Lush Life, Clockers, Freedomland, Wanderers... He spreads himself around. Can't get enough of his dialogue, the man has a golden ear for language.

Pelecanos is great at giving you a sense of place but he does get tripped up by that Stephen King tic of overdoing cultural refernces, he tends to date himself. But he leads you to the story with his characters, and I love that.

Lehane is my favorite for potboilers, Kenzie-Gennaro series is great. He paints with a broader brush, and sets himself a lot more firmly as a 'genre' writer which gets him dismissed pretty readily...but I find his stuff a real pleasure to read, his dramatic tension is great.

I enjoy Lehane, love Price, but Pelecanos by a million miles. He's toned the cultural references way down in his last few books or so, and they just read like music now most of the way through. Price is a bit too depressive and suspense-dependent, Lehane, actually, same thing. Pelecanos is an optimist. And I love the way he'll simply take a break from his plot in the last third to have characters go visit their dad or something.

Also, Pelecanos actually seems interested in kids, where Price and Lehane use them as abstractions of their guilt about parenting or society or whatever. Though I do love the dialogue in Samaritan.

Pelecanos definitely has a nice sentimental side...love the way he writes he kids, otm with that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I thought the Spike Lee "Clockers" was pretty awful, stopped watching it about halfway through.

I hated the characters in The Wanderers so much.

I thought the Spike Lee "Clockers" was pretty awful

Never liked the movie beyond the music and look of the opening, which was one reason I was reluctant to read it.

I've only read a Pelecanos book (the Night Gardener)

Totally forgot this to the point of leaving it out of my thoughts above when I praised everything he'd done recently--it's probably his weakest, a case of him being a little too loyal to his subjects/research/feelings.

Give almost anything else he's done a shot though. I love The Big Blowdown, Drama City, and despite a preachy digression The Way Home

I find Pelecanos almost unreadable, really don't get the praise for him. Great Wire scripts, though.

Never tried Lehane, but am partial to Michael Connelly for my 'tec-shlock fix. Great pacy novels, clean prose style just the right side of bad.

x-post

Re Higgins ... I kind of get the impression he must have had some big problems - some of the later books are astoundingly erratic, to the extent that they don't always make sense. But there's plenty worth seeking out - if you find A Rat on Fire, that's well worth reading. Higgins certainly fits into this category though - he's interested in low life and the way it intersects with politics (wrote at least one non-fic about Boston politics), and treats thrillers as being about consequences rather than adventure.

Connelly, super-reliable, occassionally surprising.
PS Crime Fiction, S/D

I didn't see this thread/poll, but I would have voted Pelecanos.

really liked lush life

Listening to Lehane’s “World Gone By” on audiobook. This is good but, man, it is DARK.

"I love music," Frederico said and opened his eyes. "When I was a boy, minstrels and troubadours would visit our village from the spring through the summer. I would sit until my mother shooed me from the square--sometimes with a switch, yes?--and watch them play. The sounds. Ah, the sounds! Language is such a poor substitute, you see?"

* Federico

xpost to Raymond

World Gone By is dark for sure, but not like the earlier stuff

I met both Pelecanos and Lehane in the 90s when their books sold like hotcakes in mystery bookshops and people were lining up for signings. That world is completely gone now

But those early novels from both of them were outstanding and very dark.

Lehane's early novels from the 90s featuring Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro, like Darkness, Take My Hand, and later books like Mystic River and Shutter Island are all classics. The more recent Joe Coughlin novels are a segue into the mainstream

Likewise, Pelecanos' early Nick Stefanos novels (1992-1995, the first couple of which are now highly sought-after first editions) and the DC Quartet and the Derek Strange & Terry Quinn books are also now classics. His stories were more gritty and kind of grimy, hardboiled. As mentioned above, he has since done a lot of TV writing

I vaguely remember liking Mystic River as a film adaptation of Lehane, but also remember thinking Gone, Baby, Gone was even better. I haven't seen either of them in years though