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As good as you'd expect from Price

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Richard Price's writing career has established him as an author who can do it all, from novels to movies to TV, and after a few years of contributing his talents to the dearly departed TV classic The Wire he's returned to the printed word in a big way with Lush Life. Like a great deal of Price's work it has its overly slow spots, but Lush Life still marks a significant step up in quality from Price's last book, the merely good Samaritan, and comes pretty close to the level of the classic Clockers. It's both a heavily detailed crime procedural and a sweeping urban drama, with a wide-ranging scope that captures the aftermath of a startling crime from the viewpoint of everyone affected, from witnesses to perpetrators to detectives to friends and family. Much like Clockers, it uses an early murder and its subsequent investigation as a jumping-off point for an examination of the internal tensions and pressures that impact cities and their put-upon residents. In the process, it showcases all of Price's enormous gifts as a storyteller: his mastery of place; his knack for almost frighteningly believable dialogue and characterization; and above all else his unmatched ability to translate discomfort and confusion onto the page.

As usual for Price, Lush Life is less about plot than about characters and setting, with an exacting attention to detail and tough-edged urban realism that marks much of the best crime fiction. Price's insight into the minds of his protagonists allows you to feel sympathy for them even when they behave in a less-than-exemplary manner, and even the gallery of supporting characters who fill out the periphery are fully realized and have stories of their own to tell. Even the city of New York itself becomes a character, ethnically diverse, rich with history, and home to people with aspirations to be just about everything except for what they actually are. Echoing one of the best of the many great aspects of The Wire, Lush Life takes place in a world in which few people get to be better or worse than anyone else; the great mass of its characters lie somewhere in a vast and ambiguous middle ground. In a refreshingly sharp contrast to TV shows where cops have all the answers, Lush Life finds its homicide investigators plagued by flawed eyewitness testimony, office politics, time and manpower crunches, and simple inertia.

Although Price doesn't make much of an effort to conceal his killer's identity, the book's plot itself isn't particularly different from standard murder-mystery fare. Shortly after being introduced, Ike Marcus, an energetic young bartender and aspring actor in a Lower East Side filled with similar types, is fatally shot during a robbery gone wrong after a night out at the bars. Emerging from the confusion of the early investigation, the story eventually coalesces around four central characters: Matty Clark, the lead investigator on the case; Billy Marcus, the victim's father; Tristan Acevedo, the apparent triggerman; and Eric Cash, the victim's boss and a witness to the shooting, whom Matty quickly fixes upon as his prime suspect. Between them these four widely disparate protagonists struggle under a wide range of unfulfilled aspirations and personal issues, all of which are magnified as they try to go on with their lives following a life-altering event. The book actually reaches its peak early with the chaotic, maddening rush of the investigation's early stages and the gut-wrenching interrogation of Eric by Matty and his partner, a scene laden with dramatic irony as the detectives put all of their energy into breaking the will of a suspect whom we know is really innocent. When the case loses some its momentum the book does as well, with Price getting more and more into the character arcs at the occasional expense of narrative drive. There were a few times, most notably a rather awkward memorial service for the murder victim, that I couldn't help but wish Price would move things along, superbly rendered as they may have been.

Any pacing issues aside, though, Lush Life is still a compelling piece of urban crime fiction from a master of the style. As always, Price's individualistic writing style and extensive knowledge of city life makes for fascinating reading even when his characters are doing nothing more than talking. Anyone who would rather watch drying paint than another episode of the latest CSI or Law and Order incarnation is advised to check it out.

A brilliant novel of New York City

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Often, in my own personal grading system, a novel about crime and punishment that isn't by Dostoevsky, nearly always loses a point for that reason. Whether I bought the book in an airport may or may not, but usually does lose another star. "Lush Life" is not Dostoevsky, but it is a great and humane novel about a crime that is committed at the beginning of the book, is the story of the police investigation into the murder, and is told largely from the point of view of at least one of the characters most intimately involved in the case. Although "Crime and Punishment" is told mostly through the killer's point of view and "Lush Life" is told mainly through one police detective's POV, other similarities invite the comparison. And even though it is not a great Russian novel, "Lush Life" is a novel about New York City that approaches greatness in its portrayal of the interior life of people in and of that city.

But since it is literature, and even great literature can seem tedious at times, a potential reader might be wary that he/she would have to bring too much energy to reading the novel. Don't worry about that. This book is immediately engaging on many levels. Full of suspense and uncertainty - a novel told from the head of a NYPD detective could hardly avoid that - "Lush Life" is, among other things, a nail-biter story that passionately and primarily describes a police investigation into a murder that occurred in the lower east side of Manhattan, without sentimentality, but with the tenderest possible empathy for nearly all the characters, good guys and bad guys alike. (There is a female detective who shows promise as a character, but ultimately fails to make the reader care about her in the same way as most of the other main characters - a fact not present in Dostoevsky - but this is forgivable because, in a novel of this precise scope, an exploration into the inner life of yet another character might overburden the story.) The prose is diamond-sharp and satisfying without being self-conscious as so many works of "literary fiction" are. And it's realistic to the tiniest detail. I know this because I am an attorney who works with NYPD officers and detectives in the field of law enforcement in NYC. In fact, I've never read or seen any books, films, television shows, etc., that even come close to describing the way things are actually done.

Although it would be misleading to call this "genre" fiction, If you are interested in the genre fiction about crimes, that also happens to be (great?) literature, this is the book for you. Although the story follows a familiar - but not quite formulaic - trajectory, it is not a cookie-cutter airport book, even if you buy it in an airport. The accomplished craft with which the novel is made makes "Lush Life" satisfying in a way most books of this genre cannot approach.

Vivid depiction of the Lower East Side but lacking momentum

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Two detectives work to unravel the story behind a robbery gone bad. The setting--the Lower East Side (of Manhattan)--is as much a character in this police procedural as any human character. Richard Price vividly depicts this neighborhood and believably captures the gritty street dialog used by the detectives and suspected perpetrators. The first third of the book moves quickly, but the pace lags in the middle as the investigation stalls. With the investigation going nowhere, Price delves too deeply into subplots and into his characters' inner psyches without maintaining the momentum. Fans of the genre will enjoy this novel, but others will find it tedious.

From the tube to the shelf

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A strong connection to TV shows like "Law and Order" and "The Wire" is both the strength and weakness of "Lush Life," a look at the shooting death of a hipster kid on New York's Lower East Side. Richard Price uses his considerable skill with dialogue and description to bring a nasty incident to life and vicerally evoke the streets of a not-quite-gentrified section of Manhattan. But those same skills periodically veer into mimicry of a "true crime" novel or a "Law and Order" episode--I half expected to hear that distinctive "da-dah" sound at the end of each cop chapter. Sadly, perhaps the genre of New York crime fiction has been exhausted for now and novelists should hold off on mining this lode until some of these shows go off the air. When cops themselves start looking to TV for their best lines, it's time to change the channel.

The Talk On the Street

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The master of vernacular and dialogue, Richard Price takes readers street level for a joyride across New York's Lower East Side in his latest novel, LUSH LIFE.

Ike Marcus, an aspiring actor working as a bartender at one of the neighborhood's trendier nightspots, is gunned down outside a friend's apartment building when he flips off one of his would-be muggers by telling him, "not tonight my man." Sometimes last words become famous, and Ike's are soon making headlines and showing up on cheap t-shirts around the country.

A young and handsome Jewish kid from the suburbs, Marcus is the sort of victim who makes instant headlines and overnight street shrines. His white skin, photogenic face, and American Dream background will ensure his murder receives as much front page treatment from the tabloids, as they'll provide cable news networks an opportunity to treat his death as an around-the-clock "developing story." Ike Marcus' death is a bigger worry for the area's gallery owners and local merchants and developers than it is for his killers. The NYPD knows from the jump it's unable to treat this case as just another late night shooting statistic.

Richard Price's stories have a reputation for immersing readers into the chain of events, and LUSH LIFE practically embeds them into the midst of its hectic, time-sensitive police procedural. Dynamic characterization flows throughout a fast-paced storyline, leaving readers with the impression of being involved in the sweeps and canvassing, the mind games and con jobs of the detectives' investigation. LUSH LIFE is likely to cost precious sleep time if you take it with you to bed, and can cause you to miss your stop if you're reading it on the bus or train. "A book you just can't put down" might be a cliché, but it describes Price's novel succinctly.

Despite LUSH LIFE's human drama, and the novel's occupation with personalities and vocabularies, it's neither the cops or suspects, or the victim for that matter, who are the real focus of the story. The heart and soul of this novel is the neighborhood itself.

Once the most densely populated area on the planet, New York's Lower East Side remains a microcosm of the world's disparities in wealth, power and education. Here, high-end boutiques and art galleries sit around the corner from rundown housing projects and dilapidated tenements; a neighborhood where ambitious yuppies, artists and writers, project kids, illegal immigrants, drunks and junkies, and the remnants of a once thriving orthodox Jewish community, are all neighbors. It's also the place of origin for just about everyone in the story; some living there all their lives, while others have been removed by a generation or two but, like Marcus or the character Eric Cash, have returned to the streets their parents and grandparents lived and worked, loved and died. Price's own family roots extend back to the Lower East Side, and the neighborhood's radical mix of races and nationalities, incomes and lifestyles always fascinated him. In many ways LUSH LIFE seems like a tribute to the place.

Since I'd read THE WANDERERS and LADIES' MAN back in the Eighties, I've been a fan of Richard Price. Lately Price was one of the writers for HBO's THE WIRE, a first rate crime drama whose popularity and acclaim were in no small part due to his contributions. "Richard Price is the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced," is how author (and fellow WIRE screenwriter) Dennis Lehane describes the man. I agree. As for this novel's success, it's been reported that Price is now working to turn LUSH LIFE into a movie with producer Scott Rudin, and cable's FX network wants him to adapt the story to a series pilot. I'm looking forward to both.

Other novels by Richard Price:

THE WANDERERS (1974)
BLOODBROTHERS (1976)
LADIES' MAN (1976)
THE BREAKS (1983)
CLOCKERS (1992)
FREEDOMLAND (1998)
SAMARITAN (2003)