Though war produces many devastating consequences, levelling cities, ruining economies and changing the destinies of nations, perhaps it's profoundest affects are reserved for those who prosecute it. For even in this technological age, war requires warriors to fight, men and women plucked from normal lives and sent to do hellish deeds, the enduring consequences of which no amount of training can prepare them for. Their only defense is the necessity of their mission and the approval of their brothers in arms, a potent combination of drivers that make possible the ultimate sacrifice.
But what if this bulwark is insufficient? What if the necessity of the thing cannot guard the warrior against the depravities he's forced to actualize? What if the action, the killing, gets into his blood and refuses to depart even when he's returned home to the stability of his old life? Mr. Pelecanos speculates in his spare but striking novel.
A veteran of the most recent Iraq War, Spero Lucas has Washington D.C. in his blood. The adopted son of hard-working Greeks, he was a head-strong boy of 19 when the September 11th Attacks changed the history of his nation. Feeling the pull of patriotism, he entered the marines and was shipped out to Iraq where he lost a sizeable chunk of both his innocence and his twenties. Home once more, he contents himself with freelance, investigative work for a high-profile attorney who isn't above defending the odd violent drug-dealer.
Missing the action and the camaraderie of the war, Lucas is receptive when one of the attorney's clients,currently in jail pending trial, approaches him with a deal. Someone has had the temerity to steal from the marijuana kingpin while he's incarcerated and that simply cannot be allowed to stand. If Lucas agrees to recover his stolen property, he can keep 40 percent as his cut for making right what fools put wrong. With memories of the war singing in his veins, Lucas agrees to the arrangement, plunging himself into the underbelly of a city that not so long ago was the murder capital of America. Remnants of these violent times linger on in the American capital, remnants that might well allow Spero to feel like he's once again a warrior.
Comprised of the fatalism of The Wire, the cool of Elmore Leonard and the mystery of the classic detective novel, The Cut is crime fiction at its most engaging. Spare unto skeletal, Mr. Pelecanos prose could well be criticized for a lack of affect and sentiment were such expressions and emotions not left to flow from the words and deeds of his small but vivid cast of characters, rather than from the author's own flowery pen. In this, he asks of his readers more than is obvious in the first few pages. For it is an easy thing for an author to euse prose to omnipotently fill in the gaps for his readers, to use the thoughts of his characters to spell out what cannot be said. In assiduously avoiding this convenience, this crutch, Mr. Pelecanos insists that his readers peel the literary onion, that they feel out the scenarios his characters get themselves into, that they understand the urges and the drives of a world they will likely never know.
But more than the work's structure has made The Cut a success. For Spero Lucas is a captivating presence. A young man possessed of vitality and drive, he is as urgent as he is hampered by inexperience, as eager as he is damaged by war. For while he has managed to re-engage with civilian life more or less successfully, re-awakening all the hungers of a vibrant, healthy male, he has been forever changed by the war which has imprinted upon him a dangerous desire for action that must be sated. For this thirst has become the cornerstone of Lucas' life, the guide by which he tracks through this half-forgotten world. To abandon it would be to abandon who he's become. And yet this need is a sire's song that will lead him down a dark and treacherous road.
This is both breezy and affecting, quiet and thunderous. It is easy to see why Mr. Pelecanos and The Wire formed such a devastating partnership. (4/5 Stars)
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