Author George Pelecanos has been writing about life in D.C. for over fifteen years, but it’s not the Washington you expect. He shuns the overdone political thriller, with the glamorization of Capital Hill and shiny Northwest. Instead, Pelecanos finds the homegrown stories of families who’ve been here for generations. The author, who also contributes to HBO’s The Wire, was born in the city and raised in Mt. Pleasant (but now lives in Silver Spring), and over the years has acquired a knowledge of this town and its inhabitants like few others.

His new novel, The Night Gardener, which arrived on bookshelves last Tuesday, follows D.C. detectives and families as a serial killer, once thought dead or gone after a killing spree ended in the 1980’s, reappears with the slaying of a young boy. Pelecanos took time out of his busy touring schedule to answer a few questions for DCist. You can meet the author and pick up his new book at Politics and Prose, tonight at 7 p.m.

What inspired you to focus on D.C.’s inner-city street crime? Have you always wanted to write in this genre, or did you notice your early stories begin to move in that direction?

It’s more accurate to say that I write crime novels that are set in the neighborhoods whose inhabitants were previously ignored in most Washington fiction. I’m more interested in the people and the social aspects of crime than I am in the crimes themselves. The thriller part is the engine that moves the narrative.

Every one of your characters, even those with very brief roles, is given an extremely thorough background history. Why is each person given such detail, even when they’re passing through? Do you take any of these characters from real life?

I guess I’m trying to find out who they are while I write the book. Their backgrounds help me shape them. Sometimes a character who I thought would be a walk-on turns out to be a major player in the book. I don’t outline. I “find” the book as I write it.