From the Publisher
"Triumphant . . . An outstanding accomplishment."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A huge, ambitious novel about cops, kids, and cocaine . . . Price pressure-cooks the city down to its dense, searing essentials."--The Village Voice
"Page after page explodes with a prose as vivid as kinetic art."--Chicago Tribune
"Price displays a near-perfect ear for street language. . . . He gets so deep under the skin of both the cops and the clockers that it's hard to believe he himself has never been either."--People
"A classic . . . A powerful book."--Newsweek
Chicago Tribune
Page after page explodes with prose as vivid as kinetic art.
Washington Post Book World
One hell of a book.
New York Times Book Review
Powerful . . . Harrowing . . . Remarkable.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Triumphant . . . an astounding accomplishment.
USA Today
An unforgettable picture of inner-city decay and despair.
New York Daily News
Dazzling . . . An odyssey of cops, drugs, survival and power . . . a closely observed tour de force.
Playboy
Price propels each scene with vivid dialogue that crackles with realism.
People
Price displays a near perfect ear for street language . . . He gets so deep under the skin of both the cops and the clockers that it's hard to believe he himself has never been either.
Publishers Weekly
Selling $10 bottles of cocaine to drive-by customers, clockers are at the low end of the drug-dealing chain. One step up is Strike Dunham, an ulcer-ridden, black 19-year-old who oversees his part of the operation from a bench in the housing projects of a New Jersey city called Dempsy--the bleak and confined world that screenwriter and novelist Price Sea of Love and The Wanderers, respectively explores with consistent authority. The murder of another dealer in Strike's drug organization brings in middle-aged, almost burned-out homicide detective Rocco Klein, who doesn't believe it when Strike's brother Victor, a young man with a family, two jobs and a clean record, confesses to the crime. The shooter's identity and motive are the questions on which Price turns this thoroughgoing exploration of Dempsy's dark and gritty underside, a place marked by unceasing, often random, motion and by the steady closing in of horizons. At the same time, Price plumbs the remarkably parallel interior worlds of Rocco and Strike. Although neither the hard-drinking Rocco, with a wife and infant daughter, nor the solitary Strike, who downs bottle after bottle of vanilla Yoo-Hoo to soothe his stomach pain, has a drug habit, each is as addicted--Strike to power and status, Rocco to the unpredictability and risk of his job--as are the junkies both pursue. The vividly depicted Dempsy seems a Dantean hell, at once a place and a condition from which escape may be impossible. 100,000 first printing; first serial to Esquire; movie rights to Universal; author tour. May
Kirkus Reviews
Price (The Breaks, 1982, etc.) has spent the past ten years writing for Hollywood (Sea of Love, etc.)—but you wouldn't know it from the dense textures and supple dramatics of this epic slice of urban grit about frazzled drug-dealers and burnt-out cops. Of the many impeccably authentic urban types here, Price focuses on two: 20-ish "Strike" Dunham, black chief of a crew of crack-dealers ("clockers") in the dead-end burg of Dempsy, N.J., and 43-year-old white Dempsy homicide cop Rocco Klein. Each is suffering an identity crisis when a murder puts them on a collision course. Strike, in a constant panic from dealing with his homicidal boss, crack-kingpin Rodney Little, is considering changing jobs; Rocco, six months from retirement, is thinking that his life is a big zero—a nullity underlined by his humiliating antics to curry the favor of a film star who might portray him in a movie. Then someone guns down another of Little's henchmen, and—shocking both Strike and Rocco—Strike's solid-citizen older brother, Victor, confesses to the killing: "self-defense," he claims. Not so, thinks Rocco, who decides that Victor is covering for Strike and starts harassing the young dealer by framing him as a stoolie—certain death at Little's hands. Meanwhile, myriad subplots vivify Strike's and Rocco's worlds: Rocco initiates the film star into the horrors of jail-life; Strike apprentices a young boy into dealing; Rocco's baby girl disappears; Little's legendary hit man wastes away from AIDS; Strike nearly dies from a bleeding ulcer. Finally, Strike, with a vengeful Little literally steps behind, turns to Rocco for help—a move that allows both to find a kind ofhope and renewal. A vital and bold novel rich in unexpected pleasure, with Price generally avoiding melodrama, sentimentality, and stereotype to portray a harsh world with cleareyed compassion. (Film rights sold—for a highly touted million, including Price's screenplay.)
