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The Night Gardener

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About this listen

 Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa whose body has been found in a local community garden. The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T. C. Cook.

The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and now finds work as a bodyguard and driver. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the "Night Gardener" killings.The new case draws the three men together on a grim mission to finish the work that has haunted them for years. All the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them comes rushing back, and old ghosts walk once more as the men try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams.

Bigger and even more unstoppable than his previous thrillers, George Pelecanos achieves in The Night Gardener what his brilliant career has been building toward: a novel that is a perfect union of suspense, character, and unstoppable fate. Crime Fiction Modern Detectives Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives
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I am big fan of Pelecanos, and having the author reading his own work was a real treat.
My only sadness, is that the book was very seriously abridged. What a shame.

A treat

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Would you listen to The Night Gardener again? Why?

Yes. It is a great story well read by the author.

What other book might you compare The Night Gardener to, and why?

I would compare The Night Gardener to Homicide: Life on the Street by David Simon. Both are the product of the author spending a significant amount of time embedded with an actual homicide unit and both have fascinating small details that seem to have come from this valuable experience. They both have an impressive verisimilitude. Particularly in the characterisation of the investigators, who are less crusaders and more workmanlike than television depictions would lead us to believe.

What does George Pelecanos bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Pelecanos reading highlights the humour of the dialogue, particularly the banter between the detectives.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Pelecanos' ever strong characterisation never fails to draw an emotional reaction from me. The sad truth of the central mystery and the elegiac description of a later death both moved me.

Any additional comments?

The abridgement of the story seems to have taken something more than just length away - I enjoyed the original book more. Pelecanos is a little quiet as a voice actor so turn it up!

The opening is a flashback so try and listen to the first couple of chapters when you begin the book or it may be a little confusing.

Excellent Pelecanos book withstands being abridged

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