Richard Price (1) (1949–)

While I admired Price's [b:Lush Life|1862313|Lush Life|Richard Price|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316137153s/1862313.jpg|2886449], [b:The Whites|22895696|The Whites|Harry Brandt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422904834s/22895696.jpg|42462248] did not grip me as thoroughly although my traveling companion liked it a lot. It was fine for sleepy vacation reading and the author (otherwise known as Richard Price) is a stellar writer, tossing out admirable metaphors and description like "In the middle of the cramped living room, Horace Woody, deep into his sixties but DNA-blessed with the physique of a lanky teenager, stood hands on hips in his boxers, the taut skin across his flat chest the color of a good camel hair coat. But his eyes were maraschinos, and his liquored breath was sweet enough to curl Billy's teeth." And:
She'd been a golden girl once and she took her tumble hard.
"Hey how's it going?" Billy said as he took a seat.
"The meat's so tough that it got up off the plate and beat the shit out of the coffee, which was too weak to defend itself." p.80
The plot, relationships, grudges and murders befuddled me but the writing and character sketches kept me going, a reversal from the usual thriller.… (more)

Would you believe there existed a crew of young NYPD cops who were cocky, flouted the law when it suited them, treated each other like family, and "walked the streets like Gods"? They called themselves the "Wild Geese" and had been given "a ticket to ride in one of the worst precincts of the East Bronx". Fortunately, the novel is set years after the scene this eye-rolling set-up describes; unfortunately, these characters are involved in an insufficiently convincing or interesting conspiracy to murder the one (only one?) criminal scumbag who got away from each of them during their ass-kicking days: their "white", of course referencing Moby-Dick.

But fortunately again (yea!) there's a much better second plot featuring another cop, Milton Ramos, who is introduced as everyone's nightmare of a violent, sociopathic cop, but who becomes surprisingly sympathetic and tragic throughout the story as a long-dormant campaign for vengeance for his murdered brother unfolds. Not entirely un-Ahab-like here either, you might say.

I'm not familiar with Richard Price's other work, which apparently is more literary and why he created the pen name Harry Brandt, the idea being that Brandt would get credited when Price went "slumming it" for mass market genre popularity. I have no context in which to judge a work in this genre, it being one I never touch; in general, I'd say okay, it's fine, and credit the Tournament of Books with again getting me to read something I'd never pick up otherwise.

… (more)