I expected way more from this ( )

Dig down. Dig beneath the slang and bravado and you will find a gritty story about two very different human beings trying to survive the poverty stricken streets of New Jersey and New York. Rocco Klein has been a homicide detective for too long. He has seen it all and maybe he is too jaded because, as of late, the drug deaths he encounters inch him closer and closer to a yawning apathy. It might be time to retire. That is, until he meets young, barely out of his teens, Victor Dunham. Victor seems to be too innocent to be readily and eagerly confessing to a murder. Klein knows better. Who is Vincent covering for? Could it be his always in trouble drug-dealing brother? The cat and mouse game cops and crook play makes for an adventure (albeit a little long).
As an aside: Clockers is code for drug runners. Cocaine dealers, to be more specific ( )

I can almost guarantee that when I pick up a book by Richard Price that I am going to love it, and Clockers is no exception. Richard Price's characters are real, flesh and blood humans, no excuses made. With Rocco, the detective, there is no, "Rocco knew in his gut that the kid was lying; his intuition had never let him down." With Strike there is no, "Strike was misunderstood; behind all the criminal bluster there was a heart of gold." Of course Price would have phrased it a lot better than I, not being a writer! I love that they are flawed; there is no message, no underlying morals, it just is what it is, a look of humanity at its most bleak and at its most beautiful. ( )

I could toss around plenty of "gritty, unblinking, raw" dust-jacket adjectives, but it was excellent in a way that's tough to summarize. I've only been a crime fiction reader since I saw The Wire (which Price also wrote for and even snuck some scenes from this book into), and this is the closest I've seen aside from David Simon's own works to recreating the show on the page. The two main characters – smart but nervous dealer Ronald "Strike" Dunham and aging, celebrity-obsessed cop Rocco Klein – are rendered so well that they leap straight out of the book. Strike in particular is really interesting; his formless need to leave the projects' tedious drug grind is balanced so perfectly with his despair at thinking that he would have no idea what to do once he left. The police are pretty great characters too, with strong echoes of Carver and Herc (keep an eye out for hilarious moments like the "sideways hat" bit) and their somewhat "relaxed" attitude towards most of their police work. The main plot of the book centers around Klein's investigation of a murder that Strike's brother may or may not have committed, and I found the suspense over whether Strike would be blamed for it riveting, in addition to the fascinating details of the corrosive damage the drug war has had on everyone's moral fiber. Such a great story, such great characters, such great moments; this was exactly the "Dickensian aspect" I was hoping for. I'm definitely grabbing Lush Life to read next. ( )

Surprisingly, despite really enjoying Freedomland and Lush Life, I didn't care for this one that much. It feels way too slow and sloppily drawn, where Lush Life and Freedomland ratcheted up the tension endlessly and felt really dense and detailed. There are still some really great bits, but it feels like it's missing too much for me to put it to 4. ( )