Finished Th 9/15/23
This is one of my trade paperbacks that I had never read and bought at Powell Books in Portland, OR; Tu 8/27/02. I'm amazed that I ignored this novel because I really loved it. In fact, when I finished the book yesterday I got another by Pelecanos novel as an eBook from the library- 'SHOEDOG'.
Set in the Washington DC area during the Bicentennial 1976.
Excellent discussions of music; O'Jays, George Clinton, Earth Wind & Fire
The novel begins with a bang. Wilton Cooper, a black criminal, is at a drive-in movie when he notices an ugly white boy walk into the projection booth and mayhem ensues. Cooper takes this psychopath for his partner in crime. This begins a murder spree that touches two friends, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. The book is an over-the-top splatterfest. I loved it.
The beginning of a review at 'rap sheet' by Steven Nester:
"King Suckerman reads like a blaxploitation blast from the past, with its references to that film genre, the soundtrack of the era (this tale is set in 1976, and the U.S. bicentennial is only days away), the vocabulary of young black inner-city America (with a profusion of the “N” word), and the glorification of the urban anti-hero. But beneath all of that, inextricable from the nonstop action in this 1997 George Pelecanos masterpiece, is a spot-on critique of racism, cultural appropriation, personal responsibility, and the hypocrisy of popular culture."
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-book-you-have-to-read-king.html
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