Reading The Blue Flame, the first new crime novel by acclaimed author George Pelecanos since 2018, is like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes—easy, familiar and you just know they’ll take you places. This novel features aging private detective Derek Strange, protagonist of five previous Pelecanos stories published in the early 2000s, including What it Was, which we reviewed back in 2012. The title refers to the fire still burning within Strange, a one-time Washington, DC, police officer, who even into his 70s is still seeking justice, resolution, answers.
Strange’s office has a dilapidated neon sign out front that he hasn’t had repaired, because he can’t afford to. Nor has he taken it down, because he wants the neighbourhood kids to see a black man with his own business, showing up at work every day, being a steady presence. At one time, he coached youth sports, and he takes keen interest in the welfare of the generations coming up. When the sleazy lawyer for a drug dealer accused of murder hires him to investigate his young client’s alibi, Strange agrees. The sign out front may be missing a few pieces, but he has to keep it lit, keep that blue flame burning.
The lawyer miscalculates when he assumes that, because of his age, Strange will pursue the case in some low-energy way. True, Strange moves more slowly than he used to, but he’s learned to expend effort where it will matter, and it’s fun to watch him carefully step through the underbrush of the case, sweeping aside irrelevancies, to expose clue after clue. One of the hallmarks of Pelecanos’s work, which he highlights in this recent interview with Crime Fiction Lover, is that he accounts for the passage of time, in this case, in the aging of Strange. But age is no reason to discount him. As Pelecanos himself says, “Strange has no quit in him.”
The murder victim, the accused and the two friends connected to the accused’s alibi grew up together. They’ve been friends since elementary school, played football together as teens and are still tight. The best player among them, though, was on the verge of going to college on a partial football scholarship when he was killed by a drunk driver. The remaining boys took on the task of looking after their dead friend’s younger sister, Cynthia. Strange soon discovers that’s a harder job than it might first appear, as Cynthia has strayed from their beneficial influence.
Now in their early 20s, the boys aren’t all necessarily on the straight-and-narrow, but they aren’t violent. The accused, Antone Anthony, has a lucrative business selling marijuana, with another of the friends covering the business side. The deceased, Nigel Walker, served in the Army, then worked in a rental car agency in Houston, Texas. But he missed his Washington connections and returned home, only to be shot in his car, parked near Cynthia’s home.
When the police raided Anthony’s stash house, they found the gun used to kill Nigel. That clinched the case in the investigators’ minds, but not for Strange. All his interviews with the young men and their families underscore Anthony’s rejection of violence. Even Nigel’s mother doubts Anthony could have murdered her son. Something doesn’t add up.
Strange has to wade through the friends’ evasions, Cynthia’s father’s animosity and the police department’s disinterest in alternative theories. They have their man. They’re done. But he finds a more objective listener in DC homicide detective, Angela Marinelli. Lieutenant Marinelli wants the investigation done right, however it comes out, but getting it done right means not accommodating the interference of freelancers like Strange, even if he was one of them, years ago.
You get a vivid picture of Washington now and in days past, as preserved in Strange’s memories. I lived there for eight years and have travelled there many times. I felt right at home. Many of the places Pelecanos writes about and the kinds of people who frequent them were immediately recognisable. He mostly avoids politics, but that is not entirely possible in this time or that place. At one point, Strange remarks that 40 years ago even a hint of sexual peccadillos could derail a political career, but now, all that seems to matter is which political party they support. For an old-fashioned moralist like Derek Strange, this is not the way the world should be.
Nigel’s death is in so many ways revealed as a tragedy, even a tip-of-the-iceberg one. Pelecanos is showing his readers that the world isn’t simple, that past and present are indelibly linked, and the herculean effort that might be needed to create a different future. Meanwhile, his sign is still lit, however imperfectly.
George Pelecanos is known not only for his award-winning novels, but also for his work on the multiple award-winning television series The Wire, Treme and more recently, HBO’s We Own This City. Over the years many Crime Fiction Lover reviewers and authors have cited his work as one of their inspirations. His latest novel is another chance to hear from the master.
You can watch our video preview of The Blue Flame here on YouTube. It’s on sale from 4 August in the US and 20 August 2026 in the UK.
Orion
Print/Kindle
£10.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
