George Pelecanos interview

In The Observer, Amy Raphael meets crime novelist and co-writer of TV series The Wire, George Pelecanos.

I ask Pelecanos if he's conscious of his novels creating an oral history of modern America. 'Sure. I want to leave a record. Hopefully if you read a book set in 2004 after I'm dead and gone, it will provide you with an accurate picture of the way DC was in 2004. Down to the way people speak and the slang. I'm obsessed to the point where if I have a character walking down the street in April 1968 and there's something playing in the movie theatre, you can believe the movie was playing that week. It's a small detail that would pass most readers by, but if it's wrong then someone's going to know and they'll call bullshit.'