George Pelecanos

George Pelecanos's latest book is The Martini Shot: A Novella and Stories.

From his Q & A with Dave Davies for Fresh Air:

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, our guest is writer George Pelecanos. He has a new collection of short stories and a novella called "The Martini Shot."

You know, in the novella that's in this collection - and I'm going to talk about this a bit more in a while - it's told in the first person from the point of view of a guy who's a writer and a TV producer, which you have done. But he says at a point that he grew up in a multiethnic neighborhood where they - he had an adversarial relationship with the police. You know, not that he was, you know, doing violent stuff, but that you just didn't deal with the police and wouldn't talk to the police. Was that you? I mean, did you have that kind of relationship with cops growing up?

PELECANOS: No, I didn't. I got chased by the police quite a bit, and it was almost like there was a respect there. Chase me - you know what I mean? - and see if you can. And then, you know, sometimes when I would be pulled over or whatever, you know, there were times when the police officer would say to me, you know, where do you live, son? Well, I live, you know, I live a few blocks down here. Instead of arresting me for, you know, he saw the beer cans in the back or he could smell the weed in the car, you know, with my friends, he would say all right get on home and be careful driving there. OK. So what would have happened if he had arrested me and I had gotten put into the system? My life would be completely different today. And it's why I'm so opposed to this sort of, you know, these stops for possession and this broken window policing because once you do that to a kid, once you put them into the system, it's very, very hard to...[read on]

Learn about George Pelecanos's five most important crime novels.

--Marshal Zeringue