Orion £12.99 pp320

George Pelecanos describes his Washington DC-based fiction as “social crime-writing”, in which the story is “something to hang what really interests you on”. In his recent series centred on the black private investigator Derek Strange, the key preoccupation is with how parenting and policing can prevent young men getting caught up in drug-dealing and gun crime. While these works have great strengths, they’re not always free of preachiness and a sense that the plot is merely serving the message. Perhaps in recognition of these drawbacks, his latest novel retains the theme of juvenile delinquency but introduces new sleuths and relegates Strange to a cameo role.

Its principal storyline is the shooting of Asa Johnson, a troubled friend of Sgt Gus Ramone’s teenage son Diego who was found dead in a community garden. Ramone is part of the violent crimes unit’s murder-inquiry team, interviewing those who knew Asa and following leads suggested by his maverick former partner Dan Holiday, who now runs a limo firm and by chance was the discoverer of the body. As a prologue set in 1985 establishes, the pair were junior cops when the unsolved murders (by the so-called “Palindrome Killer”) of three youngsters with reversible first names took place. Holiday hooks up in an unofficial investigation of the Johnson case with the retired Sgt TC Cook, the chief detective 20 years ago, who remains haunted by his failure to convict his main suspect and believes he has struck again.

There’s one glaring implausibility: hard to describe without spoiling the denouement, it concerns why the taciturn teenager became a misfit. Most readers, it’s fair to assume, will instantly come up with the right answer, yet we’re asked to believe that it never occurs to Asa’s schoolmates, teachers and family, nor to Ramone and his colleagues.

Otherwise, the novel is almost flawless: more care has been taken with overall shape and with integrating subplots and main plot than in the Derek Strange series, and the multi-stranded narrative exhilaratingly displays the equal ease with which Pelecanos depicts blacks and whites, kids and adults, cops and outlaws, men and women. While the historical DC Quartet remains his finest achievement, The Night Gardener has a strong claim to be regarded as his most impressive individual work.

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