Clockers

Richard Price first came up with the idea for Clockers whilst sat in a fast food restaurant in New York, during the waning years of what later became known as The Crack Epidemic. Whilst he observed overworked teenage kids sweating behind the counter for minimum wage inside, outside street dealers - in full view of the restaurant staff - made twenty times as much selling Crack. This posed the seemingly obvious question: What stops the guys inside the restaurant from doing what the guys outside the restaurant are doing? With that question in mind Price set out to research and, ultimately write, one of the finest examinations of 20th century crime ever written. Set against a modern day equivalent of Hogarth's Gin Lane, rife with crime, privation, and a new form of Mother's Ruin - Crack - Clockers is the story of murder, deceit, prejudice, corruption, and, ultimately, redemption. While there are some minor inaccuracies concerning the actual drug, it's clear the rest of the book, including the black society in which it is set, was meticulously researched, for which the author should receive recognition - after all it isn't often non-black writers document Afro-America without relying heavily on conjecture. Slightly dated now, this is still a brilliant, edifying, and educational novel. Top marks. Oh, and the answer to that question: What stops the guys inside the restaurant from doing what the guys outside the restaurant are doing? Those guys inside have someone's heart to break and they know it - that's why they aren't doing it.

Ronald "Strike" Dunham, a product of the grim, gritty inner city projects, has recently been promoted to "clocker," a street corner crack dealer. He's a bright kid who dreams of cutting-out from his dead-end existence someday. At nineteen, Strike's world is all about economic survival on the streets. He runs drug crews for Rodney, his kingpin boss. Unfortunately, Strike is not able to slough off the hassles of the daily hustle. He is already a man of means with teenage employees who report to him, and more worldly cares than he can handle. He suffers from stomach ulcers and is constantly drinking vanilla Yoo-Hoos to soothe the almost constant pain. Then Rodney asks him to kill another clocker who is skimming money. He tells Strike that this hit will be the key to getting ahead in the organization. Rocco Klein is a burnt-out, middle-aged homicide detective who drinks too much and has the home life from hell. He too dreams of a better future, while patrolling the rough New Jersey neighborhoods where drug killings are almost a daily occurrence. When yet another homicide occurs, a young man with two jobs, a clean record, and a family, confesses to shooting the street tough. Klein does not believe for a minute that twenty year-old Victor Dunham is guilty. However, he likes Victor's brother, Strike, for the job. He pressures Strike to either confess or to give up the real killer. The ulcers are about ready to perforate with the stress of Klein leaning on him, his homicidal boss threatening violence, his brother and family all on his case, and the possibility of a drug war over turf on the horizon. "Clockers" is an intense mystery and a provocative chronicle of life on the mean streets. Whodunnit and the motive is almost impossible to guess. Richard Price paints a provocative portrait of life in inner city America like no other. "Clockers" is set in the fictional town of Dempsey, NJ, a bleak, claustrophobic ghetto where escape is almost impossible, and black-on-black crime is prevalent. He depicts the details of everyday existence for dealers, customers and cops, clearly, believably, with street language that rings true. The dialogue is vivid and gives his characters even more depth and realism. I have never met a fictional character with the pathos and poignancy of Strike, an extraordinarily complex figure who is impossible to pigeonhole. Price uses two central protagonists, polar opposites, who are forced to interact throughout the novel. The author discussed the use of these central figures in an interview: "I wanted to create a situation where people are the products of their sides and because of a crisis are thrown into each other. And they are forced to empathize well beyond the point where they thought they would be, and then they get tripped up by what they absorb. The journey becomes the destination." "Clockers" was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This is a superb novel which I highly recommend. Richard Price is the a

Clockers is a murder mystery, complete with suspense and a twist ending, cloaked in an unconventional, raw street setting. The novel possesses more street-smarts than any other book I've read, fiction or not. The dialogue, internally (i.e., in the characters' own heads) and externally, was tough and vibrant, and employed street vernacular which rang credible without sounding clichéd. Many authors tell tales of drug dealers and ghetto crimes, but rare is the account from a drug-dealer's point of view. A troubled, intelligent, calculating drug-dealer, no less, who considers the repercussions of his every move.All of Clockers' characters were realistically flawed, able to invoke both sympathy and disgust. Strike, the ulcer-stricken dealer, was in constant turmoil as he struggled between trying to earn enough from his illicit trade to get out of it, and attempting to help others avoid being dragged into the same web. Rocco, the homicide detective and delinquent family-man, had a love-hate relationship with his work, and sought a mission through which to justify his continued involvement in the force. Victor (Strike's brother) was an honest, hard working black man who had risen above the allure of the street life around him, but wrestled with his own demons and internal sense of justice. Everyone's paths met with the murder of a lesser character, at which point the cat and mouse game was afoot.Lesser, but no less interesting plot lines abound: Strike's education of his would-be apprentice, Tyrone; Strike's efforts to free himself from an unhealthily dependent relationship with drug kingpin Rodney; and Rocco's schoolboy interest in being shadowed by a cocksure filmmaker with an interest in a police picture. Also fascinating and seemingly credible were the lessons in police and ghetto-civilian dealings: crooked cops being paid for protection; dealers ratting on one another to escape arrest; and unlikely, yet highly effective, working relationships between cops and dealers born from years of coexistence. Lastly, the issues broached by Clockers are current by today's standards, including AIDS, the questionable efficacy of drug busts, and the shiftlessness of ghetto kids who turn to pushing in the absence of concerned adults.

Richard Price has an ear for street dialogue and he knows how to give his characters depth and dimension. As much as I loved Price's "Freedomland", this book is an even greater accomplishment.There are no one-dimensional characters here. Everyone is real. Strike, the clocker, deals drugs and damages the life of a young boy. Yet there is goodness, awareness and a glimmer of hope inside him. Sometimes we hate him, sometimes we pity him, sometimes we admire him. Rocco the homicide cop is equally vivid, a hero in some ways, a tragic figure in others. These are people we care about because they're so full and real. Even Rodney, Strike's boss, a badass dude for sure, dispenses some truths and solid advice when he's recruiting clockers in lockup.As deep as the characterizations run, the book surprisingly evolves into a whodunit. By the time you realize this, you're so involved with the characters, you have a steep investment in how it all turns out. There were times I laughed out loud, there were times I cried, and there were times I had to put this book down and reflect on the poignant truths that reveal themselves to these people. As a fan of crime fiction and police procedurals, this book stands apart from the genre. There is action, to be sure, but "Clockers" is a character study in a gritty environment, and you feel the threat and wear of imminent violence on every page. Yet you'll find some decency as well.For an exciting and totally involving journey into the inner city and the world of cops and dealers, it doesn't get any better than this.

One the wittiest, darkest, most complex murder mystery since L.A. Confidential (The book a Classic masterpiece, the movie nothing more than good entertainment) Rocco and Strike are perfect players for Richard Prices character study of cops and dealers, the good and the bad, the black and white and the brown who all seem to be misunderstanding eachother rather than truly listening to eachother. Price was able to get me so into the charcters complex persona and agendas that when he uncovers the answer to the mystery I realized that I had become as blind as Rocco firy detective and Strikes mentally confused and conflicted drug dealer. The Clockers are as deadly as they are sad and as angry as they are full of it. (That doesn't include Rodney, Buddha Hat, or Errol Barnes, who all have an evil and dangerous aura that, unlike most hoods, truly is dangerous.) The film was surprisingly faithful to the novel and its message, although I was dissapointed that they took out such charcters as Buddha Hat and Futon and Peanut and Champ and didn't focus on Thumper at all and waited till the end to bring out the rage and fury of Andre until the end of the movie. The book, though, is a classic example of urban tension and decay and depression and hopelessness and the good people who are taken down because of it. But also how an act of mercy can bring hope to the most hopeless clocker and the most burnt out detective.