King Suckerman is a sterling thriller that weaves the blaxploitation films, the drug deals, the soul music and the racial tensions that defined the seventies into a story of natural-born killers and two men who risk everything to bring them down. Wilton Cooper is at a drive-in movie when he notices the ugly white boy walk into the projection booth. Seconds later he hears a gun goes off, perfectly timed to coincide with the movie’s noisy climax. When the boy struts coolly out, blood sprayed on the front of his cheap print shirt, Cooper knows he’s found his partner. Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay are old friends whose affection transcends the barriers of race. Clay is a Vietnam vet trying to make a go of his own small business, while Karras is drifting, playing pickup basketball and supporting himself with small-time drug dealing. When Karras takes Clay with him to make a buy from a new supplier, they cross paths with Wilton Cooper — and enter a world where merciless, unpredictable violence is the only certainty. Cooper cuts a swath of bloody mayhem that leads straight to Karras’s door, and Karras has the battle of a lifetime to keep his walk on the wild side from destroying his entire world. Set in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the Bicentennial, King Suckerman is an unforgettable novel of morality, friendship, and unexpected consequences. This powerful novel confirms George Pelecanos as one of the great original talents in crime fiction.