Mystery writer George Pelecanos took some heat for his new Hell to Pay even before it was published. The issue was complexity.

        “Even my publisher was on me. Can you pull a few characters? There are too many subplots. Can you pull a few of those, too?,” he said at the start of a 26-city tour that brings him to Cincinnati on Thursday.

        He didn't pull anything. “I look at it as a tableaux of life in Washington, D.C.,” he says. “You know, you walk down the street and you see a million things happening at once, some related, some not. That's the feel I wanted.”

Related by theme

        That's the feel he got. And if his tableaux is complicated, it's worth it because the rewards are many.

        The elegantly written Hell to Pay is Mr. Pelecanos' 10th crime novel and his second starring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the odd-couple investigators who made their debut last year in the best-selling Right as Rain.

        This time, they're teaming up to snatch teen-age hookers from their pimps, find a trio of grim murderers, knock over a drug kingpin and win a few football games along the way. The plots and subplots are all related by theme, but not necessarily by events.

        At the center of Hell's seedy menagerie are three disenfranchised African-American teen-agers who live in a world fueled by marijuana and beer, punctuated by dog fights (they shoot losers), financed by drug sales, spiced with street violence and made tragic by the women they regularly trash.

        This is a trio you just know will end up killing someone, though the book's first murder doesn't occur until page 191 — not your traditional mystery novel.

Real meat of story

        Slightly off-center in the slime pit of characters is a teen-age runaway that Strange and Quinn have been hired to find. They do, then her pimp finds them and things turn ugly. Switchblades, you know.

        A little more off-center is Oliver, the drug kingpin, who won't dirty his hands with a gun but has no trouble ordering his uncle's murder. He's also the father of the novel's murder victim, but no one knows it.

        Orbiting around all this is the pee-wee football team that Strange and Quinn coach. Its cast of characters enter the novel almost in the background, but they and their iffy relationships soon assume a central role.

        Laced throughout is what Mr. Pelecanos calls the real meat of the story and the thing that drives it more than the action: Strange's unending moral torture.

        Consider: The first time we meet him he's exiting a massage parlor that's known for more than back rubs. He continues using the services of prostitutes throughout the book, even as he's working daily to get prostitutes off the street, even though he considers it sleazy, even though he has a loyal and loving girlfriend. And even though he's lecturing his football players about growing up clean, avoiding the streets and treating women with respect.

Crucial decision

        But that moral dilemma pales next to this late-breaking news: Oliver hires Strange to find the guys who killed his son and deliver them to him. Justice takes so long and can be so iffy — and he has a staff that can deliver it swiftly, Oliver explains. Strange's reaction and final action are shockers.

        “I wanted the book to be character driven,” Mr. Pelecanos says. “That's why I gave Strange those very difficult choices and played with his head.”

        Readers accustomed to the corpse-a-chapter thriller approach will be disappointed. The action moves slowly, and is halted frequently for more of Strange's hand-wringing.

        But it's all wrapped in such rich detail, so carefully laid out and so full of multidimensional characters that readers who don't require a lot of blood-letting will have trouble putting it down. And more trouble not shoving it in friends' faces and telling them, “You gotta read this.”

        George Pelecanos signs and discusses Hell to Pay, 7 p.m. Thursday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Madison and Edwards Roads, Norwood; 369-8960.

Book revisits UC radiation experiments
Pops, friends take turn at Irish tunes
'Spider-Man' trailer online
Get to it
KNIPPENBERG: Taft's old canoe and Brewster, too
'Shackleton' left producer cold
Black belt prefers custom-made suits
Bloodshed light in new mystery
Tristate best sellers list
What Tristaters are reading