KING SUCKERMAN **SIGNED COPY**

Boston: MA: Little Brown and Company, 1997. 1st ed., with full number line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Fine in dust jacket, not price clipped, with protective mylar cover. SIGNED COPY. "A fictional homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s? Well, yes, but hard-boiled master Pelecanos' latest is much more. Combining the eccentric flash of Pulp Fiction, the noir soul of David Goodis, and the idiosyncratic heart of Elmore Leonard, this wildly violent crime novel effectively evokes the comic-book heroics of the Superfly era while at the same time sucker punching us with the humanity at its core. The story takes place during the Bicentennial celebration in Washington, D.C., and has as its linchpin that familiar crime-plot device: the drug deal gone bad. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Vietnam vet and record-store owner Marcus Clay and his friend, small-time dealer Dimitri Karras, find themselves in possession of a large sum of cash belonging to a movie-loving, psychopathic ex-con and a shotgun-toting, Afro-wearing "white-boy-wanna-be-black-boy cracker." With James Brown and Jimi Hendrix wailing in the background, Marcus and Dimitri try to avoid the inevitable confrontation, which comes, Godfather-like, as the Fourth of July fireworks erupt on the Mall. Pelecanos captures the galvanizing energy that the Superfly image generates in his characters, both black and white, both over the edge and just this side of it, but he also reveals the desperation and even the naked fear that often lurk beneath the strut. Having reluctantly orchestrated and then survived the climactic showdown, Marcus leaves the scene like a black Clint Eastwood at the end of The Unforgiven, craving only the solace of ordinary life." -- Booklist . Signed by Author. 1st Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. Book.