Country: USA
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 593
Richard Price is one of the co-writers of The Wire. That makes him automatically OK in my book. Also, that triggered a spark of curiosity in my mind, knowing that he was a legendary crime writer. I had to check him up. What better novel to start with than Clockers, made into a movie by equally legendary director Spike Lee, just three years after its publication. It's crime fiction in it's purest form. Hard-nosed cops, losing their soul in a city, corrupted up to its institutions and criminals, working in businesslike fashion to menial drug dealing tasks and unspeakable atrocities.
The setting is familiar to any fans of The Wire. The first chapter seems to have been a direct inspiration for the show's first scene where D'Angelo Barksdale and his teenage crew are dealing dope in the towers. But unlike the best show in history of T.V, Clockers couldn't afford to just follow the Sisyphian struggle of law enforcement in a godforsaken city. It would have been decent, but forgettable then. It had to up-the-ante, like literary agents say, or shit-had-to-hit-the-fan crime writers would rather explain. And hit the fan it does. Small time drug dealer Darryl Adams gets shot in a local fast-food, rugged cops Rocco Klein and Larry Mazilli are affected to the case. The solution seems simple enough at first, but the further the two cops pull the strings, the more it seems the real culprit has created a kingdom for himself and that many miserable souls are willing to take his place.
I absolutely loved the plot of Clockers. The structure is ultra-conventional, but the characters are so well defined and thoroughly unique, they display how a classic idea can be twisted into a crime epic with the right amount of originality. Rodney Little, Strike, Victor Dunham, Darryl Adams, Errol Barnes and everybody else from the bad side of the law are beaming with originality and representing a ghettoized society, that grew in a marginal space of America. Price's fictional town of Dempsy is one of the bleakest, most terrifying achievements of crime literature. You do not want to end up in this dead end suburban hole, forgotten by the American dream.
One of the pitfalls of dual point of views though, is that one side will always be less interesting than the other. The law enforcement point of view is a lot flatter and makes the reading of Clockers a tad uneven. Larry Mazilli is promising enough, but ends up taking the passenger seat as the novel focuses on Rocco Klein. Price makes feeble attempts at giving Klein some kind of internal conflict, but he falls in every cop cliché there are and soon enough, he evicts Klein's personal life from the novel. He becomes some sort of plot device, which is in charge on untangling the strings pulled by the assassin of Darryl Adams. He would have made a terrific side-kick, but he doesn't have the strength of a lead.
Nevermind that it's kind of a daunting task to read, due to the uneven narration, Clockers is still an admirable crime novel. The synthesis of institutionalized criminality made by Price is breathtaking and leaves you fearing for your safety. That's another thing with Price. His writing has enormous documentary value. He does a lot of research to give his novels the gritty,realistic edge that they have. If you like crime novels that challenge you a bit, give Clockers a chance.
