The novels of George P. Pelecanos have been praised as the contemporary equivalents of Chandler's, butat least by modern standardsPelecanos's are better. His territory is the unglamorous, workaday side of metropolitan Washington, D. C. Private detectives and policemen also populate this landscape, along with prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judgesand, of course, criminals, both penny-ante and viciously psychopathic. But the role of the law and its agents is far more complicated in Pelecanos's books.