Description: Set during the bicentennial celebration in Washington, D.C., this gritty neo-noir novel uses a familiar plot device, the drug deal gone bad, to fresh and often startling effect. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Vietnam vet and record store owner Marcus Clay and his friend, small-time dealer Dimitri Karras, find themselves in possession of a fortune belonging to a movie-loving, psychotic ex-con and a shotgun-toting, Afro-wearing "white-boy-wanna-be-black-boy cracker". With James Brown and Jimi Hendrix jamming in the background, Marcus and Dimitri try to elude the inevitable confrontation, which comes as the Fourth of July fireworks erupt on the Mall. Pelecanos's dark urban odyssey captures the energy of the Superfly world while forcing the reader into an uneasy identification with the desperation and fear that lurk beneath the comic machismo trappings.

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