It's the week leading up to the Bicentennial celebration in Washington, D.C., and King Suckerman is the hot new blaxploitation film that's got everyone talking.

Small-time dealer Dimitri Karras and his friend, record-store owner Marcus Clay, are out looking to score some weed when they stumble in on a big deal gone bad — and pick up some cash that isn't theirs.

Pursued by a trigger-happy gangster looking to settle the score, Dimitri and Marcus suddenly find that they're players in a savage game of cross and double-cross.

Brilliantly evoking the retrocool of seventies music, clothes, and movies, King Suckerman is bold, real, and violent — a supercharged thriller in the hardboiled tradition of Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Pulp Fiction.

Here is George Pelecanos's strongest work to date — a book that is certain to win him a whole new audience of admirers.