The Blue Flame by George Pelecanos

The Blue Flame by George Pelecanos

He was curious. It was the cop in him. That flame was still alive.

The neon "Strange Investigations" sign may be flickering in disrepair outside his office, but private investigator Derek Strange is still accepting new cases. When a flashy drug lawyer hires him to prove an alibi for an accused murderer, Strange can't help getting drawn into the darkness.

In his hunt for answers, he stands his ground against some of Washington, D.C.'s most dangerous criminals, and a police department that doesn't entirely welcome his interference. As the violence escalates and claims another victim, the raised stakes force Strange to question his own moves. Are his instincts still intact?

The Blue Flame is signature Pelecanos: tough, smart, rich with details of a time and place-and at its core, exposing the good and bad that exist side by side in so-called heroes and villains alike.

George Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman's shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992.

Pelecanos is the author of twenty books set in and around Washington, D.C. He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker and numerous other publications. Esquire magazine called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world." In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer."
Pelecanos was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award, the AFI Award, and the Edgar. He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show. He was a writer and co-producer on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, produced by Steven Spielberg, and most recently worked as a writer and Executive Producer on the HBO series Treme.

Pelecanos lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.