Clockers - Softcover

Richard Price

4.08

9,285 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747562733 ISBN 13: 9780747562733

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd, 2003

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Rocco Klein, veteran homicide detective, has had enough of life on the edge. When a warm summer night brings yet another drug-related murder, he has no sense that the case is anything special. A young black man steps forward to confess but a little digging reveals that he's never been in any kind of trouble, whereas his half-brother, Strike, runs a crew of street-corner coke deales - 'clockers' - in a nearby housing project. Soon Rocco is sure that Strike is the real killer - and suddenly Rocco's appetite for the job is back. With a vengence...

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About the Author:

Richard Price spent four years with dealers and cops on the streets of urban America researching the raw material for Clockers. His first novel, The Wanderers, was a literary sensation when it was published in 1974. Three other novels followed - Bloodbrothers, Ladies' Man, and The Breaks, but more recently Price has become one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters. The Color of Money - for which he received an Oscar Nomination - and Sea of Love are two of his credits. Clockers was directed by Spike Lee and starred Harvey Keitel and John Turturro.

From 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 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.) -- Copyright �1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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