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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Lush Life
by Richard Price |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Scars Much
crime fiction is predicable and formulaic. A rare exception comes from
Richard Price and his latest novel, Lush Life.
The crime here is a vehicle for presenting the lives of a huge cast of
characters, each of whom bears the visible or hidden scars of a life that has
had challenges. The protagonist is New York police detective Matty Clark who
leads the investigation into the murder of a bartender. Set on the Lower East
Side of Manhattan, post 9/11, Lush Life
presents the details of real life, lived by real people with dialogue that
absorbs the reader. Here’s an excerpt, pp. 42-45: Matty stood hunched over, a
hand on the roof of the patrol car in order to be on eye level with the
victim/witness sitting motionless in the backseat. "Eric?" As he opened
the door, Eric Cash turned to him with shock-starred eyes. A slight tang of
alcohol was in the air, although Matty was fairly certain that the kid had
the drink chased out of him a while ago. "I'm Detective Clark. I'm very
sorry for what happened to your friend." "Can I go home now?"
Eric said brightly. "Absolutely, in a little
bit. I was wondering though, it would be of tremendous help to us ... Do you
think you could maybe come back around the corner and show me exactly what
happened?" "You know," Eric
continued to speak in that lively dissociated tone, "I always heard
people say, `I thought it was a firecracker going off.' And that's
exactly what it sounded like. It's like, I don't remember how many years ago,
I read this novel, whatever one, and the character is in some city and he
witnesses a stabbing, and he says it was like the stabber, I'm paraphrasing
here, the stabber just like, tapped the other guy on the chest with the
knife, just a pat, really soft, and the stabbed guy just carefully laid
himself down on the cobblestones and, that was it." Eric looked at
Matty, then quickly looked away. "That's what it was like, `Pop,' so
soft. And that was it." Coming around the corner back
onto Eldridge Street, Eric Cash did a little baby-step shuffle of distress
when he saw the blood still there, Matty supporting him by the elbow. Day was breaking faster now,
fresh and soft, the street a madhouse of birds. A dawnish breeze made Nazir's
tattered pennants snap above his shop as if they were strung from a mast, and
the tenements themselves seemed to be rolling forward beneath the scudding
clouds. Every cop on the scene, every
Night Watch, every plainclothes and uniform, was either on a cell phone
calling in, calling out, calling up, or else feeding each other's steno pad;
Matty always taken by that, how you could literally see the narrative
building right before your eyes in a cross-chorus of data: names, times,
actions, quotes, addresses, phone numbers, run numbers, shield numbers. By now the La Bohemers had
mostly packed it in, but they were being replaced by another group, the
video freelancers hopping out of vans, one of them even rolling up on a
ten-speed bike, a police scanner lashed to his handlebars. "OK," Cash began,
wincing and tugging on his hair as if he had forgotten something critical.
"OK." "Take your time,"
Matty said. Bobby Oh had stepped off to
direct a canvass of those kids who remained on the scene, see if anything
personal out here was keeping them from their beds. "OK, so . . . We were
walking across Rivington from Berkmann's, the three of us, heading for
Steve's apartment here?" pointing to the tenement next to 27. "He
was, we had to get him up there, he was shit-faced, I don't really know him,
I think he went to college with Ike, I don't really know Ike either, and . .
." He started to drift, whirling a little as if looking for someone. "And . . ." Matty
nudged. "And
these two guys, they come out of the dark like two wolves, put a gun on us,
say, 'Give it up.' And I'm, I immediately hand over my wallet, I had to let
go of Steve to do it, he just flops to the sidewalk, but then Ike, I don't
know, Ike, he like steps to them, says, 'You picked the wrong guy,' like he's
ready to fight, then `Pop,' just `Pop,' and they're gone. "You picked the wrong
guy.' " Matty wrote it down. The kid had told Bobby Oh his friend said,
"Not tonight, my man." "They didn't say anything
else?" "I think one might have
said, 'Oh.'" ‘“Oh’?” "Like `Oh shit,' then
maybe the other said, 'Go.'" "Nothing else?" "'Oh' and `Go.' I
think." "And which way did they
go." "That way," pointing
south. "But I'm not sure." South now, not east, which is
what he told Bobby. South presented a whole new set of projects but no subway
stations, making the shooters local, most likely from the massive Clara
Lemlich Houses. Unless this guy had been right the first time and they ran
east … Finished with their canvass,
two Night Watch detectives exited the tenement directly across the street
from the scene, one of them making slant eyes with her fingertips, i.e.,
crammed to the rafters with Fooks. Matty saw Bobby Oh catch the
gesture, his expression, Matty hating to admit it, inscrutable. "And just one more
time," he said to Cash. "Describe them for me?" "I don't
know. Black. Hispanic. I'm not trying to be racist, but in my mind? I close
my eyes and see wolves." Matty noticed that Nazir in his
store was studying this guy as he spoke, giving him a hard eye. "Other than wolves
..." "I don't know. Lean, they
were lean, with a goatee." "Both had goatees?" "One of them. I think. I
don't know, I was mostly looking down. Hey, listen," he said,
unconsciously doing the Twist again as he blindly scanned Eldridge. "I
already told all this to the Asian detective earlier, at this point my
memory's getting worse, not better-" "All right, look, this is
got to be hard for you. I understand, but—" "I didn't do anything wrong,"
his voice starting to break. "No one said you
did," Matty said carefully. Nazir rapped on his window to
get Matty's attention. He looked furious. "Just bear with me, Eric.
I know you want to catch these guys who shot your friend as much—" "I told
you, he isn't
my friend. I don't even really know him." Matty noted Eric's use of the
present tense, wondered if this kid knew that Marcus was dead. Cash had yet
to ask how the other guy, friend or not, was doing. "Can you describe the gun
at all?" Eric sagged, took a deep
breath. "I think it was a .22." "You know your guns?" "I know my .22s. My father
made me take one when I moved to New York. I ditched it the minute I got
here." "OK," Matty said
after a pause, "then what happened." "What?" "They shot Ike and ran
off. Then what happened." "I tried to call 911
on my cell, but I
couldn't get any reception, so I ran into the, the vestibule there to try
indoors." "You ran indoors." "It must've been dead
altogether, so then I ran back out to the street to get help, and all of a
sudden there's these four cops pointing guns at me." Eric took another
breath. "Huh." "What?" "I
just realized . . . I've had five guns pointed at me in the last two
hours." Price’s
attention to detail will please many readers of Lush Life,
and the depth of development of so many characters will amaze most readers.
This is crime fiction like no other. Steve
Hopkins, September 20, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Lush Life.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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