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The Night Gardener

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 2,474 ratings · 295 reviews

Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa whose body has been found in a local community garden.

The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc"...more

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published July 1st 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published 2006)

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Apr 30, 2009 jo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of the The Wire and richard price

Recommended to jo by: linda

Shelves: mystery-thriller

this is one extremely good police procedural. it is so good that it makes me less sad to have already read Lush Life, to have exhausted all episodes of The Wire, and to know that richard price won't write another epic for another few years (he ain't fast, that man). in fact, a quick perusal of his work has led me to understand that george pelecanos does not always write police procedurals, and i have made a little deal with myself that, not to spoil the pleasure of this novel, to keep it lingeri...more this is one extremely good police procedural. it is so good that it makes me less sad to have already read Lush Life, to have exhausted all episodes of The Wire, and to know that richard price won't write another epic for another few years (he ain't fast, that man). in fact, a quick perusal of his work has led me to understand that george pelecanos does not always write police procedurals, and i have made a little deal with myself that, not to spoil the pleasure of this novel, to keep it lingering on my tongue for as long as possible, i will read all of his police procedurals before i read any other of his book, if at all. because, i've realized, i like police procedurals more than any other crime&mystery writing, hands down. this is personal so i won't bore you with it. but let me tell you why this is so good.

first of all, it's paradigmatic of a certain way of looking at police work in cities (it's set in D.C.) made edgy to the verge of hysteria by race, class, and the tensions of gentrification. richard price does this in Freedomland, Clockers, and Lush Life, especially the latter (gentrification was not as present to the collective mind when Freedomland and Clockers were written). this paradigm looks at cops as real people with life-issues, problems, and, occasionally, serious instances of fucked-upedness. it also endeavors not to demonize cops, but to make them genuinely interested in people, including the losers they occasionally have to send to jail but would rather not. in The Wire, richard price's work and here, cops are often lonely, often working extra jobs so they don't have to go home, often corrupt but not too much, often indulging in exploitative sexual relationships with informants, often keen on the bottle, often sexist, racists, and generally unpleasant. you don't like them but you understand them, especially when they are "good police" who care about their job more than about the politics of policing.

pelecanos squeezes all these features in this book so artfully that i say this one volume exemplifies how they work (or are meant to work) together better than any of the instances i mentioned above.

then there are the cops you love, lorenzo in Freedomland, matti and his female partner (what's her name?) in Lush Life, and, here, rhonda and ramone, who are, both of them, very well designed and very cool. i have to regret that these guys make men a lot more complex than women. okay, kima of The Wire was a fairly complex, if not fleshed out, character, but both the female detective in Lush Life and rhonda here in The Night Gardener are these wise and wise-cracking, no-nonsense female cops, tough as nails, soft as leavened dough, and way too busy to shoot the fat with the guys. they are great and you love them, but it'd be nice to move away from the stereotype, is all i'm saying (hey tennyson!).

but the complexity of this story is the real treat. the layering. the interweaving of police work, personal psychology, social issues, multiple and only apparently intricate plot-lines -- all doused with hard-boiled ethical reflections on the value of childhood, parenting, and community life. nice. (less)

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Jul 15, 2008 L rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: gio, laura

Shelves: mystery

This is a many layered book. The mystery itself is a fine one, one whose ending I didn't see coming. (But then, I'm not one who usually guesses "who done it," anyhow, probably because that's not why I read mysteries.) Other twists were more obvious, but no less enjoyable for that; they're well done.

It's the other layers--character, fatherhood, love (and lack thereof), relationships among co-worker cops, the city itself--with which Pelecanos works his greatest magic. The young men in this novel,...more

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Nov 30, 2007 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

there were parts that were clunky and some of the usual contemporary crime cliches popped up; but the book surprised me more often than not. pelecanos is not content to slip into genre and do what he's supposed to do, but neither does he draw so far outside the lines so as to lose the reader looking for a great and dark crime book... his characterization, dialogue, and tone were top notch -- i fully understand why simon snatched this guy up to write for The Wire.

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Dec 02, 2011 Peter Clothier rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’m cheap. I buy my entertainment books at the local library used book stand, and donate the ones I’ve read. It’s a good system for all, and it does a bit supports the library, I suppose, in hard times. It does mean, though, that I come by my thrillers way past their publication date—truthfully, well past their publication year. I don’t much mind, though. Unless they’re really old, they read pretty much the same. No burning issues. I've loved the genre since browing up with the greats--Leslie Ch...more

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Jan 24, 2008 Fuzzy rated it 5 of 5 stars

George Pelecanos is one of the writers of The Wire and The Night Gardener, while not actually set in the same universe (as we'd say in the scifi world), feels very much The Wire-esque. Of course, Pelecanos has been writing these sorts of books for longer than The Wire has been on the air, so I suppose The Wire is very Pelecanos-esque. Whichever and whatever, I'm really glad to have discovered his writing--it'll be another way to satisfy my Wire fix when the series comes to it's all-too-soon en...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who read police procedurals, watch "The Wire", and/or live in D.C.

When I want a good mystery, I usually turn to time-tested, well-respected authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The Night Gardener was published last year, but I have a feeling that it will prove to be a classic and its author, George Pelecanos, held up as an equal in the craft to writers like Hammett and Chandler. The premise of this police procedural is that two decades ago, there was a series of murders of children in community gardens in DC. Twenty years later, there is another...more

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Jul 02, 2008 Brandi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this book initially thinking it was a classic/thriller mystery but was sorely disappointed. The crux of the story didn't actually develop until over 150 pages. There was a lot of time spent on crude, back and forth dialogue between the police characters that felt more like screenwriting than a novel. Rather than providing a resolution to the crime mystery that was presented, the book becomes more of a fable on what it really means to celebrate diversity and waxes philosophical about the m...more

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Jan 03, 2008 Andrew Watson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

George Pelecanos is a writer I turn to at least once a year, when I know I want to be entertained and taken back to Washington DC. This novel took a little longer than some of his others to get going, but once it did I was back in a familiar world and worrying that something bad wasn't going to happen to good people and hoping one or two others would get their comeuppance. Not so much music or food as some of his other work and perhaps not the kind of cuddly book to be reading at Christmas, but...more

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May 26, 2013 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thought I was going to hate this book. The first third was laden with exposition driven character building. It painted, in broad strokes of grey, a mundane world where the expected characters did the expected thing. Only the hint of intrigue from the first chapter, a twenty year old murder investigation, kept me going. And after a few hundred pages even that became a distant memory.

But then it all clicked together.

I was gripped as Ramone, Holiday and Cook slid into the dark underbelly of DC,...more

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May 22, 2013 Book Concierge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, concierge, library, murder, thriller

Audio book narrated by the author.
3.5*** (4**** for the book / 3*** for the audio)

Detective Gus Ramone thinks he recognizes a signature in the body of a local teen found shot in a community garden in a middle-class area of Washington DC. Twenty years ago, when he was just a rookie, Ramone and his partner Dan “Doc” Holiday” assisted veteran detective T.C. Cook in the investigation of several murders. The serial killer, dubbed “The Night Gardener” because the bodies were left in gardens, was never...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Joseph Halpern rated it 4 of 5 stars

George Pelecanos shows why he's one of the most respected writers in police procedurals. His style is terse and straightforward. He doesn't write with flash or pizzaz but with an understated quality that lets his stories speak for themselves. In The Night Gardener what starts off looking like a typical serial killer novel turns into a story about police officers and their lives in a harsh D.C environment. Gus Ramone a good cop trying to look out for his familly doesn't police because it's a call...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos
The first I knew about this book was when I
bought the limited edition CD of George reading
from the book with Steve Wynn backing him with
some good and moody guitar playing. The cd also
has Cindy, It was always you the song they wrote
together on it!
So I had to have the book too, which is another
of George's fast paced Noirish crime thrillers,
this time we are on the trail of the Palindrome
killer and all sorts of other assorted Washington
lowlifes, the tr...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Safa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-police

I really wanted to like this novel, given the author's background and the very positive reviews from critics and readers alike. However, I ended up feeling disappointed and slightly cheated.
One: The serial killings drew me in and I was expecting this to be the front and centre of the story, but this did not really end up being the case
Two: The cast of characters was bewildering at first and it took me a good quarter of the book to untangle all the names (and I am used to reading quite meaty tom...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Bonnie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The reasons I gave this book only three stars is because of the language, which is definitely R-rated. I'm not a fan of such language. However, considering the subject matter and characters, it does fit and is realistic. The book is very well-written and, honestly I found it engrossing. I can't really comment on whether the sex was explicit since I skipped to the next track when a scene of that sort started.

I checked out this book because I had heard that Mr. Pelecanos writes very good police st...more

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May 11, 2011 Neil Mudde rated it 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely stunning story, since it is a mystery it contains several raw killings, as well as some raunchy sex scenes, the story plot is fascinating, and I would really like you to enjoy and read the book, hence I will leave the plot alone for you to find out, and enjoy it as much as I did.
I would like to highlight one of the many interesting characters, his name is Asa, spelled either way it is the same, the author takes his time to describe what it is like to be a person totally aware of being...more

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Jan 01, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: maryland-vanity

If you've ever seen The Wire, you have some awareness of the author of this book. Pelecanos was the writer for the penultimate episode of every season of the show, the episode that was sure to punch you in the gut. He is there for "Where's the boy, String?", there for "Get on with it", there for "You gonna help me?", for "How my hair look?" So, knowing that, I of course had some high expectations for this particular novel.

You can see the style of writing that was similar to The Wire, particularl...more

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Jun 20, 2010 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Note: This is a review of the unabridged audiobook.

Ostensibly, this mystery novel from famed D.C. novelist (and "The Wire" scribe) George Pelecanos is about an apparent serial killer, who targets teenagers with palindrome names and dumps their bodies in community gardens. (Hence the title, a police nickname).

But while the murders (which take place over a period of decades) keep the characters moving, it's really about much more -- urban crime, racial tensions, machismo and testosterone, and how...more Note: This is a review of the unabridged audiobook.

Ostensibly, this mystery novel from famed D.C. novelist (and "The Wire" scribe) George Pelecanos is about an apparent serial killer, who targets teenagers with palindrome names and dumps their bodies in community gardens. (Hence the title, a police nickname).

But while the murders (which take place over a period of decades) keep the characters moving, it's really about much more -- urban crime, racial tensions, machismo and testosterone, and how people interact in a complex and changing city like D.C. Many of the plot strands -- such as themes about the gentrification of D.C., and how the Maryland suburbs have changed -- are only tangentially related to the serial killer plot. And, as one character asks, can you ever really "solve" a crime?

The novel focuses on two characters -- a straight-shooting homicide detective, and an alcoholic, disgraced former cop eager to make his mark as private investigator. (Some of the action takes place in Hyattsville and Prince George's County in Maryland, where I lived for a few months last year and what the characters derisively refer to as the "9th Ward" of D.C.) Both began their careers as beat cops with the night gardener murders, and eventually the case brings them reluctantly back together.

Pelecanos has gained more fame recently, due to his connection with "The Wire," and at times this book is so similar to the HBO series that it feels like a novelization. Like "The Wire," there are alcoholic and vulgar cops, discussions of how the drug war has changed crime and policing, and top-down looks at institutions. Some of the characters seem like they are directly based on characters from "The Wire."

But Pelecanos has his own style and mission, and it is often captivating. As he navigates through our nation's capital, he creates a vivid portrait about how people cope with an often cruel and baffling world.

NOTE: I always feel like I have a responsibility to mention the audiobook. For the most part, Davidson performs ably. But I got a bit annoyed with his tendency to overplay accents in dialogue. Done right, this can work--I loved Ed Asner's impersonation of corrupt Floridians in Carl Hiassen's novels. But since this novel has a host of characters with different races and ethnicities, I think it would have been better to just allow us to use our imaginations.(less)

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May 18, 2010 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It was very good, I had trouble getting attached to a character in the beginning and there was too much set up from character to character to completely hold my interest. Of course in the end the set-ups all pulled the story together and were significant. It's just that there were too many candidates for mc as I was reading the first third of the book. Doc Holiday, Gus Ramone, even one of the kids or criminals all could have been the MC. Gus took over a bit towards the last half but even then Ho...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Holly Lee (Bellas Novella) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

The Night Gardener reads like a prime time television drama. This isn't so surprising, seeing as the author George Pelecanos is a writer for the critically acclaimed hit "The Wire". This guy has a knack for dialogue, because of this the book is a unique experience. The story unfolds as a televisions show might, it flows easily and is believable.

The relationships are complex, the characters flawed, the questions unanswered. The novel brings reality back to cop dramas. I loved reading about cops t...more

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Nov 11, 2009 Amy Meyer rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who enjoys literary crime fiction

Recommended to Amy by: I won it

Title: The Night Gardener
Author: George Pelecanos
ISBN: 978-0-316-05650-2
Pages: 372
Release Date: August 2006
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Crime Fiction
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Publisher: Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa, whose body has been found in a local community garden.

The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked a...more

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Jun 22, 2009 Gaby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: arcs, detective-and-mystery, reviewed-books, summer-reading

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Synopsis:
The book opens with glimpse at a crime scene in a community garden in Washington D.C. in 1985 where Pelecanos introduces three key detectives. T.C. Cook, a sergeant with 24 years on the force, known as "The Mission Man" with a 90% closure rate. Dan Holiday, known as Doc, is tall, thin, and is results oriented but with little respect for the rules. Gus Ramone, like Doc Holiday is on his second year at Metro DC police force, but he prefers to follow the playbook, stay safe, put in his tim...more Synopsis:
The book opens with glimpse at a crime scene in a community garden in Washington D.C. in 1985 where Pelecanos introduces three key detectives. T.C. Cook, a sergeant with 24 years on the force, known as "The Mission Man" with a 90% closure rate. Dan Holiday, known as Doc, is tall, thin, and is results oriented but with little respect for the rules. Gus Ramone, like Doc Holiday is on his second year at Metro DC police force, but he prefers to follow the playbook, stay safe, put in his time and move on. Holiday and Ramone are handling crowd control. T.C. Cook is examining the crime scene surrounding Eve Drake, a young black teenager and the third and latest victim of the "Night Gardener". There is considerable pressure to solve and catch the culprit of the "Palindrome Murders".

Pelecanos then takes the readers to Washington D.C. in 2005. Doc Holiday has been eased out of the police force and instead owns and manages a limo company while Ramone has remained on the force and risen up. As a senior detective, Ramone plays on his strengths to close cases and liberally relies on the skills of those around him. His life centers on his wife and their young daughter and their fourteen year old son who is undergoing some adjustment problems in his new Maryland school.

With Holiday's accidental discovery of another teenage corpse in a community garden in the Southeast D.C. area twenty years later, Holiday and Ramone's paths intersect. Ramone's teenage son had been friends with Asa Johnson, the victim, and Ramone takes an interest in the case.

The Palindrome Murders had suddenly ceased in 1985 but the Night Gardener had never been caught. Holiday suspects that the Night Gardener may have become active again and that Asa was his latest victim. Though he'd left the police force years ago, Holiday finds himself thinking about Asa Johnson and the Palindrome Murders and doesn't trust that Ramone and the detectives will solve the case. Holiday reaches out to retired T.C. Cook to see if together they can help the police locate the killer.

Review:
George Pelecanos has built a strong reputation for authentic dialogue and interesting characters through fifteen Washington D.C. based detective novels and his Emmy-nominated show The Wire. The Night Gardener is my first experience with his work and I can see how he's developed a strong and loyal fan base.

The Night Gardener is carefully crafted and comes together smoothly. While the three main detectives and Asa Johnson's murder is the primary storyline, there are several other narratives and crimes that occur simultaneously. Even the subordinate plot lines and characters are well developed, which heightens the level of suspense. I couldn't tell until the ending how everything would fit together. But when I reached the end, then the details that were floating around in the periphery somehow made sense and I realized how The Night Gardener was so carefully crafted.

I would recommend this book to people fond of forensic and police thrillers, and detective novels. I think it would have special appeal to those familiar with the Washington D.C. area.(less)

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Jul 09, 2010 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-fiction, mystery

The side of me that can get sucked into watching a Law and Order: (X)* and then watch the next eight episodes also airing that day enjoyed this book. The part of me that feels disgusted with myself after an orgy of Dick Wolf created police procedurals didn't care for this book so much.

Reading the police procedural stuff I could feel the critical part of my mind snapping off. I'm surprised that I didn't leave the subway coming home last night with paper cuts from turning the pages so fast. I can...more

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Jun 21, 2009 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Although I knew of George P. Pelecanos before I became obsessed with The Wire (where he was a writer/producer), I hadn't really read him. He's typically categorized with Richard Price, who try as I might I just can't read (& no, I'm not really sure why). I think it was this pairing in my mind that made me wait so long to try one of Pelecanos' books, but I'm glad I got around to it.

The Night Gardener is a police procedural set in Washington, DC. There are murders (both old & new) & co...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Lisa H. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, police-procedurals

Pelecanos's books are just my kind of reading - a mystery/police procedural that digs into the dark heart of human nature.

Gus Ramone is a Washington DC homicide detective and former Internal Affairs investigator, 20 years on the job, married to a woman he still loves (and who still loves him), trying to do right by his two children. Not an alcoholic, divorced, or emotionally shut-down -- despite the horrible things he has seen over the years, he has managed not to become bitter and jaded, and h...more Pelecanos's books are just my kind of reading - a mystery/police procedural that digs into the dark heart of human nature.

Gus Ramone is a Washington DC homicide detective and former Internal Affairs investigator, 20 years on the job, married to a woman he still loves (and who still loves him), trying to do right by his two children. Not an alcoholic, divorced, or emotionally shut-down -- despite the horrible things he has seen over the years, he has managed not to become bitter and jaded, and he tries always to do his job by the book.

Contrast this with Dan "Doc" Holliday, who was at one time Ramone's partner, until he quit the force in the face of a threatened IA investigation, and now has a small limousine business, mostly transporting wealthy businessmen and athletes to and from the airport and around the city. Doc is a heavy drinker and spends a lot of time picking up women in bars for casual sex. He resents having been (as he sees it) forced out of police work.

When the body of a young man is found in one of the city's community gardens, dead from a gunshot wound, both Ramone and Holliday independently note strong similarities to a series of murders that happened 20 years before, when both of them were rookies. Holliday's investigative instincts are reignited, and he contacts T.C. Cook, the legendary detective who worked on those cases and never really gave up the hunt, even after he retired. Both men feel they have something to prove: Holliday that he really was "good police", despite his fast and loose attitude toward police work, and Cook because the case remains open and still haunts him.

Ramone's by-the-book nature requires that he not encourage two civilians' independent investigation, but his sense of responsibility for the IA case that took down Holliday and his respect for Cook prompt him to ally himself with them to determine what happened to Asa Johnson, and whether the Night Gardener is indeed at work again.

Portrays police detectives and officers as individuals balancing the usual work/family conflicts, workplace politics, etc., rather than assigning the various characters stereotypical "roles." Ultimately it's less about the case than about the people.(less)

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Aug 26, 2009 Tina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, thiller-suspense

I am a die hard fan of the HBO series The Wire. i have always maintained that that tv show "read" more like a novel than it did a typical tv show. It had characters with depth, there were no good guys and bad guys only people who were varying shades of grey. It had layers and a definite, recognizable signature of style and storytelling.

So it is no surprise that a book by George Pelecanos, a contributing writer for that show, would also showcase many of the things that make the show so compelling...more I am a die hard fan of the HBO series The Wire. i have always maintained that that tv show "read" more like a novel than it did a typical tv show. It had characters with depth, there were no good guys and bad guys only people who were varying shades of grey. It had layers and a definite, recognizable signature of style and storytelling.

So it is no surprise that a book by George Pelecanos, a contributing writer for that show, would also showcase many of the things that make the show so compelling.

This story is at once a murder mystery, a police procedural, a set of character studies and a little dash of domestic drama.

The central story of the murder of a teenage boy seems, at first, to be straightforward enough. Years ago, a killer known as the Palindrome Murderer (his victim's names spelled the same forward and back) eluded the police. Now 20 years later, the police wonder if he has returned because the newest murder victim, also discovered in the same way as those other victims, has a name that is spelled the same forward and back.

In the 20 year time, the three cops who were at the scene of the last known palindrome murder have all had very different life trajectories. Seargent Cooke, who headed the investigations at the time, has since retired and spends his days in boring loneliness but still thinks, almost obsessively, about the case he could never solve. Dan "Doc" Holiday was drummed out the of the force and now owns a chauffeur & bodyguard business and sees this at his chance at redemption. And then there is Gus Ramone, a straight arrow who has worked his way up the ranks and who has a very specific interest in the newest murder because the victim is a good friend of his own teen aged son.

What follows is the story of how these three, in their own way, pursue the case and then reconnect. Interspersed in the main story are other moments of police work as well as glimpses into the home life of Gus Ramone, all worked organically into the flow of the narrative. As a whole, there is a lot more going on than just a murder case. There is a lot of story with some excellent secondary and even minor walk-on characters.

Another thing that I really liked about this book is that it is set in DC which has a very large minority population and the writer does not ignore that. I have read books by writers who set their books in large urban areas that have a very sizeable minority population and not a single person in the book is a person of color. What is better is that Pelecanos is very matter of fact about race. It is isn't there to be preached about or obsessed over, it just is. These people all live there. Some comment on it, some describe others by race, some have unconscious prejudices, some don't consciously think about it, but it is there. That is true even of his treatment of Gus and his family life.

One side subplot deals with Gus' determination to make sure his children attend a better school than the on they are supposed to go to. But the school they send the kids to unfortunately racially profiles in a very passive-aggressive way. Gus is married to a black woman so his kids are biracial. He and his wife struggle with the decision whether to keep their son in a school where the classes, teachers and material are better but he and other black students are singled out for minor infractions that are ignored in their white classmates or to send him back to his old school that is in decay but accepts him and where he flourishes. It isn't a heavy handed, bleeding heart subplot, but it does remind me of the excellent season 4 of The Wire where the public education system was a central theme.

I was gratified with how really wonderful a read this was. The story was not predictable, the ending was somewhat surprising to me but was exactly the way it should have ended.

I highly recommend!(less)

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Feb 06, 2013 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Excellent hard-boiled crime novel from a member of the Wire's writing staff. Of course, Pelecanos was a novelist well before he joined the show, and as seen in this book, is something of a kindred spirit matter and compassion for those who dwell in the blighted, drug-infested inner city. This novel is about police, naturally, trying to catch a serial killer preying on children in DC, and tangentially, about drug dealers and stick-up kids and others of their milieu. It's written in terse, uncompl...more

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Feb 16, 2011 Billy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was torn between giving this book 3 stars or 4, so I went with the higher of the two. This is a story about 3 cops; one "good", one "bad", and one "broken", and their common bond brought back together by a childs death. There are alot of reasons that I like this book, so I'll just give the highlights. First, this is a book where the "good" guys DONT WIN. Finally, some real world realistic results. They come oh so close to winning, but don't quite get there, although we are left to believe that...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

In this 13th novel, George Pelecanos returns to the gritty streets of Washington, D.C.__a far cry from Georgetown and Capitol Hill__at the top of his game. Critics agree that Night Gardener transcends the crime-novel genre. While it contains whodunit elements, it's much more about crime, criminal motivation, and the souls of everyone involved. Authentic descriptions of Washington's urban landscape, the compelling characters, and the story line's immediacy make Night Gardener one of the author's

...more

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Mar 09, 2009 Holly rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books

It is readily apparent to the reader that George Pelacanos writes screenplays as this book reads very much like one.

What I liked about this audio book is that Pelacanos portrays Washington, D.C. in a positive light despite the criminal elements. It is easy to negatively stereotype the District and its residents in a novel as other authors have done. Pelicanos takes an evenhanded approach to heroes, villains, and bystanders alike. He features Southeast D.C. as a place where real people live, not...more

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Jul 11, 2009 Anne Hartman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Starts out in 1985 with 3 police officers working the 'Palindrome Killer' case.
Cut to 2005 - case still open and another kid gets killed - Asa, who happens to be one of the detective's son's friends. This case ends up getting the 3 officers back together...one of which is retired, one had begrudgingly left the force, and the other still works, but it is not his life. We do get to see what his life is like in W. DC...wife, 2 kids, everyday troubles, etc.
I really liked that the book focused a lo...more

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About George Pelecanos

George P. Pelecanos (born 1957 in Washington, D.C.) is an American author of detective fiction set primarily in the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. He has worked extensively on the HBO series The Wire. His novels use an ensemble cast of characters, following their exploits across several generations. While there are...more

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Trivia About The Night Gardener

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Quotes from The Night Gardener

“Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain. (final lines)” — 7 people liked it

“I'm just a man, no more enlightened than any other.” — 4 people liked it

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The Night Gardener

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