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The Ways of the Dead A Novel Neely Tucker Books

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The Ways of the Dead A Novel Neely Tucker Books

Neely Tucker is an experienced, respected writer for the Washington Post. He writes about crime, those who commit it and those who render it fictionally. The Ways of the Dead is his first novel and it is, as they say, an auspicious debut.

Inspired by (but not systematically based-upon) the Princeton Place murders in D.C. in the 1990’s, Tucker takes us into George Pelecanos territory, the ‘real’ Washington of grit, drugs, and violence, the Washington of trash bins and Dempster Dumpsters that contain bodies, the detritus of unspeakable urges and actions. In this case there is a serial murderer at work, his victims a black woman, a Latina woman and a white woman whose father is a prominent judge, positioned for an appointment to the Supreme Court.

Tucker’s investigator is a reporter, Sully Carter. This is an interesting choice. There are not a large number of crime novel protagonists who pursue this occupation. While reporters protect us from the rich and powerful who would control and use us, they are also in the business of selling papers, an enterprise which sometimes leads them to camp out on our lawns, compromise our privacy and chip our teeth with metal microphones.

Nevertheless, the choice of a reporter as a protagonist is a good one, particularly given the fact that the author knows all of the lore, taxonomy and street talk of those in the trade. The distant inspiration here may be All the President’s Men, but the more recent inspiration is season five of The Wire. Good reporters find themselves in conflict with the establishment, the bad guys and their paper’s legal and editorial worriers. There is a pecking order on the streets (particularly in the nation’s capital), a pecking order among the warlords as well as among the federal agencies. There is a pecking order within a newspaper bureaucracy. If you take an aggressive reporter and insert him or her into these contexts you are guaranteed to have multiple forms and levels of conflict, the conflict which drives all fiction but particularly crime fiction.

Sully Carter is a hard-drinking loner who has contacts but few commitments. He has all the makings of a solid crime fiction series character. The author’s characterization of him is solid. The D.C. setting’s ominousness is beautifully realized. Neely Tucker knows his geography and his ambiance. The plotting is very strong with some nice reversals—not the jaw-dropping reversals of a Jeffery Deaver, but the kind of reversals which take us ever more deeply into the heart of darkness. Jim Thompson once said that all of these kinds of books serve a common theme—things aren’t quite what they seem to be. A colleague of mine in a troubled university system once said to me, “Just remember, things can always get worse.” If you put those two notions together you get the climax and ending of The Ways of the Dead.

I look forward to the next installment.


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The Ways of the Dead A Novel Neely Tucker Books Reviews

In investigative reporter Sully Carter, Neely Tucker has created a colorful, damaged, intriguing character. And he has placed him in fully realized settings - the poor, dangerous D.C. neighborhoods within a stone's throw of the Capitol Building, and the personality-filled newsroom of the 1980s, when reporters could make a difference -- especially reporters whose sources include the most dangerous boss in the hood. The dialogue made me laugh, and the plot kept me turning the pages. I look forward to accompanying Sully on his next story.
A serial killer is murdering young black women but authorities are unable or unwilling to tie a number of disappearances together. Are the police just incompetent or worse--insensitive to a minority community?
When the white daughter of a prominent judge is murdered a local reporter starts to snoop and slowly uncover
the truth.
I live in DC so I wanted to like this book because I know all of the areas referenced in the book and I was also living in DC at the time the book was written. However, Sully is too profane and vulgar for my taste. The other characters in the book come of as stereotypes. I couldn't get all the way through and eventually deleted it from my . I was hoping that Sully would be like the Easy Rawlins of 90s DC- I was disappointed.
Sully Carter is a newspaper reporter with a nose for the news. He also has a problem with alcohol and anger management after returning to Washington, D.C. after being stationed in Bosnia. He has seen much more than anyone could imagine.

Sarah Reese is the teenaged daughter of a D.C. judge. Her body is found behind a convenience store. Three young black men are arrested, although Sully has it on good authority that these kids were set up.

When Sully investigates, he finds that there have been other young women found murdered in the same general area. Their cases were barely looked at.

And someone doesn't want the truth printed.

This is a very well written mystery that takes the reader from the alleys and streets to the reporter's desk. Violence and corruption are the co-stars in this book. As a journalistic reporter, Sully must pick apart what he thinks and what he knows to get to the real story... and it just might kill him.

From Book Blurb Inspired by the real-life 1990s Princeton Place murders and set in the last glory days of the American newspaper, The Ways of the Dead is a wickedly entertaining story of race, crime, the law, and the power of the media.

Many thanks to the author and Goodreads Giveaways for an ARC.
Neely Tucker is an experienced, respected writer for the Washington Post. He writes about crime, those who commit it and those who render it fictionally. The Ways of the Dead is his first novel and it is, as they say, an auspicious debut.

Inspired by (but not systematically based-upon) the Princeton Place murders in D.C. in the 1990’s, Tucker takes us into George Pelecanos territory, the ‘real’ Washington of grit, drugs, and violence, the Washington of trash bins and Dempster Dumpsters that contain bodies, the detritus of unspeakable urges and actions. In this case there is a serial murderer at work, his victims a black woman, a Latina woman and a white woman whose father is a prominent judge, positioned for an appointment to the Supreme Court.

Tucker’s investigator is a reporter, Sully Carter. This is an interesting choice. There are not a large number of crime novel protagonists who pursue this occupation. While reporters protect us from the rich and powerful who would control and use us, they are also in the business of selling papers, an enterprise which sometimes leads them to camp out on our lawns, compromise our privacy and chip our teeth with metal microphones.

Nevertheless, the choice of a reporter as a protagonist is a good one, particularly given the fact that the author knows all of the lore, taxonomy and street talk of those in the trade. The distant inspiration here may be All the President’s Men, but the more recent inspiration is season five of The Wire. Good reporters find themselves in conflict with the establishment, the bad guys and their paper’s legal and editorial worriers. There is a pecking order on the streets (particularly in the nation’s capital), a pecking order among the warlords as well as among the federal agencies. There is a pecking order within a newspaper bureaucracy. If you take an aggressive reporter and insert him or her into these contexts you are guaranteed to have multiple forms and levels of conflict, the conflict which drives all fiction but particularly crime fiction.

Sully Carter is a hard-drinking loner who has contacts but few commitments. He has all the makings of a solid crime fiction series character. The author’s characterization of him is solid. The D.C. setting’s ominousness is beautifully realized. Neely Tucker knows his geography and his ambiance. The plotting is very strong with some nice reversals—not the jaw-dropping reversals of a Jeffery Deaver, but the kind of reversals which take us ever more deeply into the heart of darkness. Jim Thompson once said that all of these kinds of books serve a common theme—things aren’t quite what they seem to be. A colleague of mine in a troubled university system once said to me, “Just remember, things can always get worse.” If you put those two notions together you get the climax and ending of The Ways of the Dead.

I look forward to the next installment.