Clockers

Award-winning author Richard Price offers a viscerally affecting and accomplished portrait of inner-city America.Veteran homicide detective Rocco Klein's passion for the job gave way long ago. His beat is a rough New Jersey neighborhood where the drug murders blur together ... until the day Victor Dunham -- a twenty-year-old with a steady job and a clean record -- confesses to a shooting outside a fast-food joint. It doesn't take long for Rocco's attention to turn to Victor's brother, a street-corner crack dealer named Strike who seems a more likely suspect for the crime. At once an intense mystery, and a revealing study of two men on opposite sides of an unwinnable war, "Clockers" is a stunningly well-rendered chronicle of modern life on the streets.

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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 of hope 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 $1.9 million, including Price's screenplay.)

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"Strike" is his name, and he's a clocker--a crack dealer. Strike runs his own kingdom in urban New Jersey. When a seemingly ordinary, drug-related murder occurs on Strike's turf, veteran detective Rocco Klein, who's gone pretty much blas{{‚}}e about his job, finds rejuvenation by attempting to prove that the confessed murderer--Strike's own brother--is innocent, and the guilty one is none other than Strike himself. By a widely acclaimed novelist and screenwriter (who's already sold the screen rights to this book for big bucks and has Martin Scorsese set to direct it), Price's latest novel is weighty in both senses of the word: poundage and effectiveness. So what's the point of all these so many pages? Two points. One, it's an incredible course in urban street life, particularly the crack culture, based on Price's own extensive research--years of hanging out with both cops and druggies. And, two, it gives witness to the timeless art of weaving a compelling narrative, no matter how raw the raw material. Many readers may proclaim this Price's best novel yet. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1992)0395537614Brad Hooper

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