{"id":4345,"date":"2015-04-29T06:36:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T10:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4345"},"modified":"2015-04-29T06:36:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T10:36:21","slug":"the-whites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4345","title":{"rendered":"****The Whites"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"crime

(photo: wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt<\/a>, narrated by Ari Fliakos. This crime thriller received a splashy reception, in part because of the puzzlement over Price\u2019s transparent attempt to write it pseudonymously (which even he gave up on<\/a>), but more because\u2014whatever name he adopts\u2014the publication of one of his gritty novels is an event crime fiction aficionados celebrate. Price is the author of Clockers, Bloodbrothers, The Wanderers<\/em> and numerous screenplays, as well as award-winning episodes of The Wire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What has made Price so successful, as Michael Connelly points out in a New York Times<\/em> review<\/a>, is his belief that \u201cwhen you circle around a murder long enough you get to know a city.\u201d Says Connelly, Price is an author who \u201cconsidered the crime novel something more than a puzzle and an entertainment; he saw it as societal reflection, documentation and investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s title refers to the unsolved but unforgotten cases a tight group of young police officers confronted during their careers. Think the elusive target Moby Dick, not a racial reference.<\/p>\n

They had all met their personal Whites, those who had committed criminal obscenities on their watch and then walked away untouched by justice . . . .
\nNo one asked for these crimes to set up house in their lives, no one asked for these murderers to constantly and arbitrarily lay siege to their psyches like bouts of malaria.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the time of the novel, most members of this formerly closeknit group are out of the NYPD because of injury, other opportunities, or sheer burnout, but Sgt. Billy Graves is still on the force. Billy knows his friends\u2019 \u201cWhites\u201d like he knows his own badge number, and when they start dying in violent circumstances, he has to ask himself . . . Meanwhile, his family is the target of an unnerving and escalating series of threats, which he urgently needs to figure out.<\/p>\n

The book, told from the point of view of both Billy and his antagonist, is full of characters from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, yet all are believable as individuals. The writing never falters and contains, as Connelly says, \u201ca fierce momentum.\u201d A favorite line of mine, about a witness smoking dope in his apartment, had him \u201cblowing out enough smoke to announce a Pope.\u201d<\/p>\n

With recent events in Ferguson, North Charleston, Baltimore, and elsewhere, it isn\u2019t good timing for a cop-as-hero book, and this novel\u2019s moral dilemmas force Billy and the reader to consider the role of policing in our society and the differences between policing and justice.<\/p>\n

Fliakos\u2019s narration is excellent. Despite the large number of characters, I was never confused about whose voice I was hearing.
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