The time is 1976.  Captain Beefheart's on the eight-track.  The hot new superfly flick <i>King Suckerman</i> is coming to neighborhood theaters.  And Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of drugs and racial tension--an easy place to turn a wrong corner and land in a whole lot of trouble.  <br><br>That's what happens to Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras when they cross paths with an ex-con and his gang of natural born killers.  Walking into a drug deal gone south, Clay and Karras end up with a pile of money that isn't theirs...the sexy teenage girlfriend of the Italian dealer...and major trouble.  The ex-con is soon spilling blood to get to the cash.  The dealer is scheming to get his girl back.  And two knockaround guys named Clay and Karras are reaching a pivotal moment--the time to take a stand, go straight, and get justice.  Or maybe just sweet revenge.<br><br>In this sizzling thriller, George Pelecanos writes with a firecracker in his prose, shooting sparks on every page and earning his place among the stars of crime fiction.