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Derek Strange & Terry Quinn Series

This series follows a pair of unlikely detectives, Derek Strange, a Black man who is successful and confident, and Terry Quinn, a white man barely holding on. Together, they pursue justice in the gritty landscape of Washington D.C. Their contrasting worldviews and methods often lead to thrilling and unexpected turns. The narratives are packed with action, suspense, and social commentary.

What It Was
Hard Revolution
Soul Circus
Hell to Pay
Right as rain

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Right as rain

    • 352 pages
    • 13 hours of reading
    3.9(4122)Add rating

    The first in the excellent Strange and Quinn series from 'The coolest writer in America' GQ. Derek Strange and Terry Quinn are ex-cops turned private detectives in Washington, DC. Hired to investigate the death of an off-duty black police officer at the hands of a white policeman, Strange and Quinn are faced with the institutionalised racism of the nation's most poorly trained and dangerous police force. As the two private detectives confront the degradation of the city's flourishing drug trade, they find themselves up against some of the most implacable, dead-eyed killers ever to grace the pages of a novel. In RIGHT AS RAIN George Pelecanos introduces a memorable pair of characters into the grittily real Washington DC landscape which has led to him being acclaimed as 'a great writer' THE TIMES

    Right as rain
  2. 2

    Hell to Pay

    • 448 pages
    • 16 hours of reading
    3.9(2311)Add rating

    Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of private investigators who made their stunning debut in Right As Rain, are hired to find a 14-year-old white girl from the suburbs who's run away from home and is now working as a prostitute. The two ex-cops think they know D.C.'s dangers, but nothing in their experience has prepared them for Worldwide Wilson, the pimp whose territory they're intruding upon. Combining inimitable neighborhood flavor, action scenes that rank among the best in fiction, and a clear-eyed view of morality in a world with few rules, "Hell to Pay" is another Pelecanos masterpiece for his ever-expanding audience to savor.

    Hell to Pay
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5

    What It Was

    4.0(34)Add rating

    Washington, D.C., 1972. Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a private investigator. His former partner, Frank 'Hound Dog' Vaughn, is still on the force. When a young woman comes to Strange asking for his help recovering a cheap ring she claims has sentimental value, the case leads him onto Vaughn's turf, where a local drug addict's been murdered, shot point-blank in his apartment. Soon both men are on the trail of a ruthless killer: Red Fury, so called for his looks and the car his girlfriend drives, but a name that fits his personality all too well. Red Fury doesn't have a retirement plan, as Vaughn points out - he doesn't care who he has to cross, or kill, to get what he wants. As the violence escalates and the stakes get higher, Strange and Vaughn know the only way to catch their man is to do it their own way. Rich with details of place and time - the cars, the music, the clothes - and fuelled by non-stop action, this is Pelecanos writing in the hard-boiled noir style that won him his earliest fans and placed him firmly in the ranks of the top crime writers in America.

    What It Was