Pelecanos for Christmas

'Tis the season to be reading and this is tonight's reading suggestion for Yuletide: Nick's Trip by George Pelecanos. Okay, so I already plugged the book back in 2014, but I have extra reasons to plug it tonight. Let's say this is a revisited post from yesterday's Christmas. You should read it for many reasons. It is a great crime novel, for one and that is more than enough. Read my previous post for a bit more details. But you should read it during Christmastime because it is set during Christmastime, because the protagonist is called Nick, like Santa Claus, and like the original Saint Nick Nick Stefanos is Greek. Like all proper seasonal story, it has plenty of snowy atmosphere, drinking excesses, naughty and not so nice people and plenty of violence. And tonight, as I was plugging it on my Facebook wall, George Pelecanos himself liked my status. How cool is that? It made my day. Which, fittingly enough, is Saint Nick's Day.

Nick's Trip (Christmas read)

Because this the season to be reading, I am giving you again a reading suggestion for Christmas. This one is from one of my favorite crime writers, George Pelecanos. It is Nick's Trip, which is related to Christmas not merely because its main character Nick Stefanos shares his first name with Santa Claus (as well as Greek origins). It is also set during Christmastime. Crime fiction set during Christmas time always has a soft spot in my heart. It means blood on snow, the ever ominous presence of death when life is celebrated, danger, you name it. It also means crime drama set in time of excesses, alcoholic or others. It is simply a brilliantly atmospheric time and setting for crime fiction.

The plot is in fact two stories wrapped in one: Nick Stefanos is asked by his old friend Bill Goodrich to find his wife April, while in the meantime trying to solve the murder of a friend. It is a modern take (it was published and is set in the early 90s) on the classic private eye genre, but Stefanos is stripped from the heroic stature of the archetype: he is a drunkard and a loser, although he does know how to write: the novel is written at the first person perspective. And yes, it is set during Christmastime.