The time is 1976. Captain Beefheart's on the eight-track. The hot new superfly flick King Suckerman is coming to neighborhood theaters. And Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of drugs and racial tension--an easy place to turn a wrong corner and land in a whole lot of trouble. That's what happens to Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras when they cross paths with an ex-con and his gang of natural born killers. Walking into a drug deal gone south, Clay and Karras end up with a pile of money that isn't theirs...the sexy teenage girlfriend of the Italian dealer...and major trouble. The ex-con is soon spilling blood to get to the cash. The dealer is scheming to get his girl back. And two knockaround guys named Clay and Karras are reaching a pivotal moment--the time to take a stand, go straight, and get justice. Or maybe just sweet revenge. In this sizzling thriller, George Pelecanos writes with a firecracker in his prose, shooting sparks on every page and earning his place among the stars of crime fiction.