Right as Rain was published by Little, Brown in 2001, launching the Derek Strange/Terry Quinn series that would become Pelecanos’s most sustained examination of race, policing, and community in Washington D.C. Derek Strange, a Black private investigator and former D.C. Metro cop, is hired by the mother of a young Black plainclothes officer who was shot and killed by a white cop, Terry Quinn. Strange and Quinn — the investigator and the shooter — are forced into an uneasy partnership to find the truth about what happened.
Pelecanos used the Strange/Quinn dynamic to explore the racial mechanics of D.C. policing from both sides of the divide. Strange is rooted in the Black community of the Fourth District; Quinn is an outsider haunted by what he did. Their investigation reveals the institutional pressures, racial assumptions, and bureaucratic cover-ups that make police shootings simultaneously rare and routine.
Collecting Right as Rain
First edition (Little, Brown, New York, 2001): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
Race and Policing
Right as Rain was published in 2001, well before the national conversation about police shootings of Black men that would dominate the 2010s and 2020s. The central incident — a white officer shooting a Black undercover cop — and the investigation that follows, conducted by a Black PI and the disgraced white shooter, makes the novel prescient. Pelecanos treats the racial dynamics with nuance: both men are flawed, both are products of systemic failures, and their tentative partnership requires each to confront his own prejudices.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Derek Strange series reading order? Right as Rain (2001), Hell to Pay (2002), Soul Circus (2003), Hard Revolution (2004). The series follows Strange and Quinn through D.C.’s most troubled neighbourhoods, with the fourth novel serving as a prequel set during the 1968 riots.