[1] The novel's central plotline concerns the murder by drug dealers of a no-account deadbeat over an unpaid debt and the incidental killing of the intended victim's nephew, starting with the killers’ efforts to locate the victim and continuing through Strange's investigation of the murders and the killings’ repercussions in the world of the DC drug trade.

Hell to Pay shares many elements with the HBO original television series The Wire, on which Pelecanos has worked as a writer.

For example, the (Hell to Pay) character of Granville Oliver, who fought his way out of the projects to become a high-level crime lord who never touches drugs, and whose tastefully appointed home includes an extensive black history/black power library, bears similarities to both Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell of The Wire.

Hell to Pay received starred reviews from Booklist[3] and Publishers Weekly, who noted the novel's action starts early "and continues to throb all the way through".

[4] Kirkus Reviews wrote that "despite all the scenes illustrating the hopelessness of growing up in the nation’s capital, the author’s ardent muckraking makes his tenth novel his most hopeful, even though it takes the edge off his trademark grasp of urban evil".