Professor Richard Price — Clockers

Orion 1993 Paperback, 672pp. Award-winning author Richard Price here 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. Spine creased; tanning. (ISBN: 9781857979961). Fair.