King Suckerman was published by Little, Brown in 1997, the second novel in Pelecanos’s D.C. Quartet. Set during the Bicentennial weekend of July 1976, it follows Dimitri Karras (son of Pete Karras from The Big Blowdown) and his friend Marcus Clay, who runs a record store. A drug deal gone wrong puts a bag of money in play, and various small-time criminals, hustlers, and psychopaths converge on it over the long hot weekend.
The novel is saturated with 1970s popular culture — blaxploitation films, funk and soul music, Afros and platform shoes — but Pelecanos used the period detail not as nostalgia but as social history. The soundtrack of the era (Parliament-Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, the Ohio Players) becomes a way of mapping class, race, and aspiration across D.C.’s neighborhoods.
Collecting King Suckerman
First edition (Little, Brown, New York, 1997): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $50–$125
- Very good: $20–$50
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate to strong appreciation.
The Bicentennial Summer
Set during the July 4th 1976 celebrations, the novel captures a specific cultural moment: blaxploitation cinema is at its peak, funk and soul dominate the airwaves, and the post-Vietnam disillusionment is giving way to a harder, more cynical urban culture. Pelecanos uses the music — Curtis Mayfield, Parliament-Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder — as both atmosphere and commentary, creating one of the most vividly soundtracked novels in American crime fiction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Pelecanos use real D.C. locations? Yes. Pelecanos is meticulous about D.C. geography — specific streets, restaurants, bars, record stores, and neighbourhoods. Many of the locations have since been demolished or gentrified, making his novels an inadvertent archive of a vanished city.