Clockers [Hardcover]

Richard Price (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 1992

Certain that the young black man who has confessed to a recent murder is covering for his drug-dealing half-brother, Striker, veteran cop Rocco Klein decides to make Striker's life a nightmare. By the author of The Wanderers. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Selling $10 bottles of cocaine to drive-by customers, clockers are at the low end of the drug-dealing chain. One step up is Strike Dunham, an ulcer-ridden, black 19-year-old who oversees his part of the operation from a bench in the housing projects of a New Jersey city called Dempsy--the bleak and confined world that screenwriter and novelist Price ( Sea of Love and The Wanderers, respectively) explores with consistent authority. The murder of another dealer in Strike's drug organization brings in middle-aged, almost burned-out homicide detective Rocco Klein, who doesn't believe it when Strike's brother Victor, a young man with a family, two jobs and a clean record, confesses to the crime. The shooter's identity and motive are the questions on which Price turns this thoroughgoing exploration of Dempsy's dark and gritty underside, a place marked by unceasing, often random, motion and by the steady closing in of horizons. At the same time, Price plumbs the remarkably parallel interior worlds of Rocco and Strike. Although neither the hard-drinking Rocco, with a wife and infant daughter, nor the solitary Strike, who downs bottle after bottle of vanilla Yoo-Hoo to soothe his stomach pain, has a drug habit, each is as addicted--Strike to power and status, Rocco to the unpredictability and risk of his job--as are the junkies both pursue. The vividly depicted Dempsy seems a Dantean hell, at once a place and a condition from which escape may be impossible. 100,000 first printing; first serial to Esquire; movie rights to Universal; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Price (The Breaks, 1982, etc.) has spent the past ten years writing for Hollywood (Sea of Love, etc.)--but you wouldn't know it from the dense textures and supple dramatics of this epic slice of urban grit about frazzled drug-dealers and burnt-out cops. Of the many impeccably authentic urban types here, Price focuses on two: 20-ish ``Strike'' Dunham, black chief of a crew of crack-dealers (``clockers'') in the dead-end burg of Dempsy, N.J., and 43-year-old white Dempsy homicide cop Rocco Klein. Each is suffering an identity crisis when a murder puts them on a collision course. Strike, in a constant panic from dealing with his homicidal boss, crack-kingpin Rodney Little, is considering changing jobs; Rocco, six months from retirement, is thinking that his life is a big zero--a nullity underlined by his humiliating antics to curry the favor of a film star who might portray him in a movie. Then someone guns down another of Little's henchmen, and--shocking both Strike and Rocco--Strike's solid-citizen older brother, Victor, confesses to the killing: ``self-defense,'' he claims. Not so, thinks Rocco, who decides that Victor is covering for Strike and starts harassing the young dealer by framing him as a stoolie- -certain death at Little's hands. Meanwhile, myriad subplots vivify Strike's and Rocco's worlds: Rocco initiates the film star into the horrors of jail-life; Strike apprentices a young boy into dealing; Rocco's baby girl disappears; Little's legendary hit man wastes away from AIDS; Strike nearly dies from a bleeding ulcer. Finally, Strike, with a vengeful Little literally steps behind, turns to Rocco for help--a move that allows both to find a kind of hope and renewal. A vital and bold novel rich in unexpected pleasure, with Price generally avoiding melodrama, sentimentality, and stereotype to portray a harsh world with cleareyed compassion. (Film rights sold- -for a highly touted $1.9 million, including Price's screenplay.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 599 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1st edition (June 2, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395537614
• ISBN-13: 978-0395537619
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #787,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unconventional murder mystery with street credibility, May 29, 2001

By 

buddyhead (Taxachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clockers / Movie Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gritty And Great, August 30, 2000

By 

Mark A. Schreiber "scribe23" (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clockers / Movie Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, an excellent piece of Literature, December 5, 1999

By 

Clocker572 (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clockers / Movie Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)

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.