Richard Price is the author of six previous novels, including the national bestsellers Freedomland and Clockers, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999 he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction, articles and essays have appeared in Best American Essays 2002, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He has also written numerous screenplays, including Sea of Love, Ransom, and The Color of Money. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter Judith Hudson, and his two daughters.
“A whodunit with substance and suspense…Price is known for terrific
dialogue, and there are moments when you feel as if you are
listening to [his characters] speak, not just reading words on a
page…It’s the most interesting kind of mystery–one in which the
villain is not so easy to spot even when we know who committed the
crime.”
–Anne Stephenson, USA Today
“Engaging…provocative…Price has a fine ear for the subtle tension
between sentimentality and real devotion, and he understands the
way that chronic black poverty plays into the needs of ‘the
selflessly selfish.’ If this is a novel that raps the knuckles of a
helping hand, it’s nonetheless one to grab on to.”
–Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
“It’s a tribute to Price’s originality that [his] characters become
as distinct and real as they do…Well-intentioned Ray [is] enigmatic
and fresh…Price has a great way with dialogue, [and] a
better-developed-than-usual sense of structure. Samaritan unfolds
on twin time tracks, [and the] carpentry works…Price’s revelation
of the culprit is absolutely consistent with his characters and
thematically right on the money…Anyone who thinks fiction or
literature too small a shelf to include the other stands to learn a
lot from Richard Price.”
–David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
“Giving new meaning to the term “inner city,” Price yields up not
just the familiar, blanched moonscape of urban blight but the inner
lives and jackhammering hearts of those who pace and patrol
it.”
–The New Yorker
“A dream of a book…a supremely suspenseful novel (with a denouement
that will leave you marveling at how artfully the author kept us
from guessing the perpetrator’s identity), but to call it a
thriller would be selling it short. Part police procedural, part
high-wire psychodrama, part social study, it’s a wholly engrossing
hybrid that packs an emotional wallop….”
–Tom Sinclair, Entertainment Weekly
“Dazzling…The perfect pace of a superb storyteller is but one of
the gifts Mr. Price brings to Samaritan. Razor-sharp dialogue is
another, as well as his urban-poetic descriptive flair. It all
makes for an extraordinary novel, with the gritty plot of a
hard-edged thriller and the cosmic concerns of a streetcorner
Dostoyevsky.”
–Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
“A whodunit only in format, Samaritan is that rarity, a novel of
race relations written with authority, panache and heart.”
–Dan Cryer, Newsday
“Powerful…Wise…The novel is alive because writers like Price are
crafting books like Samaritan, about a guy who discovers the hard
way what a complicated transactions charity can be…For all the
homework that went into Clockers, Price was never a dealer or a
cop. But he has been what Ray is in Samaritan, an intruder in other
people’s lives. His fellow feeling with this character goes deep.
What he knows about Ray you don’t learn by researching the streets.
Instead, you prowl your own heart. It’s one more beat that Price
knows how to walk with authority.”
–Richard Lecayo, Time
“Without dictating Price’s fiction, reality inspires his
imagination, provoking a finely detailed and immensely readable
inquiry into what might be called the double nature of
benevolence…Where a typical crime novel would traffic in surprises
and twists, Price has always eschewed the formula. The wisdom and
impact of his recent books derive from his insight into just how
unspectacular crime can be. The perpetrators in Price’s fiction act
less out of passion or greed than drudgery and shattered hope…On
the narrative journey from mystery to resolution, Price
demonstrates his usual gifts for dialogue, detail and empathetic
portraiture…When a novelist stays that close to the ground, there
is no confusing illusion with actuality…Wrenching.”
–Samuel G. Freedman, Chicago Tribune (front page)
“Price is renowned for in-your-face fiction: violent, fast-paced,
yet morally complex…He’s also demonstrated a flair for believable
dialogue and visual detail…[Samaritan is] another of Price’s
first-rate urban morality plays–a compassionate, politically savvy
whodunit that reads like Dostoevsky circa 2003…He proves himself to
be one of our best chroniclers of big-city experience.”
–Paul Evans, Book
“A full-to-bursting package held together by a strong, suspenseful
plot… Unknowability is the key to Ray Mitchell, the essence of what
makes him such a fascinating saint…Ray is preternaturally alert,
alive to the mental states of those around him. Price, through
Ray’s alertness, gives even minor characters a real, if temporary,
being. And yet–and here’s the miracle–because it’s Ray’s alertness,
the novel, though various and populous, feels centered on his
character and therefore strong. Price does this in few words. It’s
not a function of I.Q. It’s not articulate. It’s more like a
prickling of the flesh…A demographic epic filled with little people
who command true human feeling…”
–Mark Costello, New York Times
“Price’s seventh novel ranks with the best of the others…His books
have the gutsy appeal of the classiest hard-boiled mysteries: fast
pace, tripping idiomatic dialogue, unpredictable plot swerves,
zingy sex, and genuine suspense…But [Samaritan] also possesses
philosophical breadth, clearheaded social commentary, and a fine
facility with language…Price’s vivid documentation may tease us
into thinking we are in Dempsy, New Jersey, but in fact we are in
existentialist territory… So quirky a mix of virtues makes [Price]
unique…Terrific.”
–Lynne Sharon Schwartz, The New Leader
“[Samaritan] hurtles along like the PATH train that traverses
Price’s urban landscape, weaving back and forth, before and after
the severe beating of Ray Mitchell [whose] complexity is matched by
the detective investigating the crime…Price’s dialogue rings true
throughout, and his sense of place is solid and of the moment.”
–Ellen Rubin, Elle
“Price is not just a gifted writer but also one who thinks long and
hard about human behavior...We know from page one that we’re in
good hands, with masterful detail, vivid scene-setting, and acutely
observed, naturalistic dialogue. The crime-solving framework pulls
us forward but is unencumbered by the pedantic detail of a police
procedural, and the depth of the characterizations is magnificent:
[The main characters] and the considerable supporting cast are
fully imagined beings who surprise us but never test our credulity.
Enmeshed in this taut storytelling is a meditation on the
complicated nature of giving, and a caution that, with
ill-considered charity, we can hurt others even when we think we’re
doing them a favor. Superb.”
–Keir Graff, Booklist (starred and boxed review)
“Richard Price is, without a doubt, one of our greatest living
novelists. His voice is comic, skeptical, and at all times, deeply
humane. Samaritan is a masterpiece, a novel that is actually
about–surprise of surprises–the world we live in now. Violent,
tender, hilarious, and heartbreaking, it is a world that, in
Price’s hands, is so ably rendered that even its smallest truths
attain the power of universal myth.”
–Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
“It seems to me that Richard Price has taken his gifts for
rendering human speech and for describing the jittery uncertainty
of life at the bottom, and created a narrative filled with the
sweet despair such as would come from angels looking down on us and
watching us suffer.”
–Scott Spencer
“The great literature of the world is derived from the mean
streets, and no American writer knows them better, or can drive a
story line harder, than Richard Price. Samaritan burns, not only
with stylistic eloquence but with relentless certainty–from each
richly evocative scene, each amazingly felt character, to the next.
Price writes the way an architect builds, sketching out his plan,
thinking it over to the most minute details. Thus the foundations
of Samaritan are so fundamentally valid that its presentation is a
masterpiece of the form. Price has artfully concealed a haunting
treatise on the nuances and ambiguities of human decency,
compassion, and generosity in the guise of a superlative thriller.
Samaritan is Price’s best book to date.”
–Thom Jones, author of The Pugilist at Rest
“One has come to expect from Richard Price, the most brilliant of
sardonic ironists, an eye for revelation in the commonplace, even a
kind of modern social history. But Samaritan is also a subtle story
of seduction and abandonment, of the dangerous luxury of
responsibility, and the risks that are inevitable when one is
capable of love.”
–Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut
“The mastery of urban melodrama that Price demonstrated in literate
blockbusters like Clockers (1992) and Freedomland (1998) keeps
growing and deepening–as evidenced in [this] story of a
neighborhood and of conflicting ways of life…A virtuoso alternation
of advancing action with detailed flashbacks shows how…this mystery
raises troublesome ghosts from the past, while also introducing a
boldly drawn gallery of involved and potentially guilty
characters...A ferocious admixture of bleak wit and sorrowful
compassion…The story positively vibrates with Price’s trademark
virtues of pinpoint observation and punchy dialogue…And the killer
climax and ironic denouement couldn’t be improved upon. Magnificent
stuff. If Elmore Leonard broke out of genre and were 30 years
younger, he’d be Richard Price.”
–Kirkus (starred review)
“Richard Price’s Samaritan is gripping, ambitious, and resonant
entertainment, everything you hope to find in an American novel and
so rarely do. This is the work of a fiercely honest writer at the
top of his game.” –George Pelecanos, author of Hell to Pay
“I read Richard Price for the cool, spare sound of his writing, his
words, the language he has in his bag that fits so exactly in his
settings. The characters talk the talk; the main one, Nerese
Ammons, a gem, 20 years a cop in the NY-NJ iron triangle, lays open
the plot, scene after scene, at a beautiful pace. Richard Price has
written a terrific novel.” –Elmore Leonard
“Samaritan blew my mind . . . I don’t think anyone ever sent me a
book in hopes of a comment that was this good . . . An absolutely
riveting story. The reader is hooked from the first page . . .”
–Stephen King
“The mastery of urban melodrama that Price demonstrated in literate
blockbusters like Clockers (1992) and Freedomland (1998) keeps
growing and deepening–as evidenced in [this] story of a
neighborhood and of conflicting ways of life…A virtuoso alternation
of advancing action with detailed flashbacks shows how…this mystery
raises troublesome ghosts from the past, while also introducing a
boldly drawn gallery of involved and potentially guilty
characters...A ferocious admixture of bleak wit and sorrowful
compassion…The story positively vibrates with Price’s trademark
virtues of pinpoint observation and punchy dialogue…And the killer
climax and ironic denouement couldn’t be improved upon. Magnificent
stuff. If Elmore Leonard broke out of genre and were 30 years
younger, he’d be Richard Price.” –Kirkus (starred review)
As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. It is a harsh lesson that Ray Mitchell learns, much to his regret. A successful white writer for television, he has come back to the predominately black New Jersey housing projects where he grew up. While trying to reconnect with his alienated teenage daughter, Ray volunteers to teach a writing class at his old high school. When he is found brutally beaten, his head crushed, Detective Nerese Ammons decides to find the culprit as a return favor to Ray; they are old acquaintances from the neighborhood, and Ray once helped her out when they were children. But Ray's refusal to identify his attacker doesn't make her job easy. Price's seventh novel returns to the gritty, decaying urban world of Clockers and Freedomland; once again, his characters are fully fleshed-out human beings, his dialog sharp and true. And Price's take on the nature of generosity (is the giving for the benefit of the receiver or the giver?) is a fascinating one. Like Nerese, however, readers will become impatient with Ray's "selfish selflessness"; the guy is basically a jerk. A dark, depressing novel for larger collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/02.]-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
"A whodunit with substance and suspense...Price is known for
terrific dialogue, and there are moments when you feel as if you
are listening to [his characters] speak, not just reading words on
a page...It's the most interesting kind of mystery-one in which the
villain is not so easy to spot even when we know who committed the
crime."
-Anne Stephenson, USA Today
"Engaging...provocative...Price has a fine ear for the subtle
tension between sentimentality and real devotion, and he
understands the way that chronic black poverty plays into the needs
of 'the selflessly selfish.' If this is a novel that raps the
knuckles of a helping hand, it's nonetheless one to grab on
to."
-Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
"It's a tribute to Price's originality that [his] characters become
as distinct and real as they do...Well-intentioned Ray [is]
enigmatic and fresh...Price has a great way with dialogue, [and] a
better-developed-than-usual sense of structure. Samaritan
unfolds on twin time tracks, [and the] carpentry works...Price's
revelation of the culprit is absolutely consistent with his
characters and thematically right on the money...Anyone who thinks
fiction or literature too small a shelf to include the other stands
to learn a lot from Richard Price."
-David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
"Giving new meaning to the term "inner city," Price yields up not
just the familiar, blanched moonscape of urban blight but the inner
lives and jackhammering hearts of those who pace and patrol
it."
-The New Yorker
"A dream of a book...a supremely suspenseful novel (with a
denouement that will leave you marveling at how artfully the author
kept us from guessing the perpetrator's identity), but to call it a
thriller would be selling it short. Part police procedural, part
high-wire psychodrama, part social study, it's a wholly engrossing
hybrid that packs an emotional wallop...."
-Tom Sinclair, Entertainment Weekly
"Dazzling...The perfect pace of a superb storyteller is but one of
the gifts Mr. Price brings to Samaritan. Razor-sharp
dialogue is another, as well as his urban-poetic descriptive flair.
It all makes for an extraordinary novel, with the gritty plot of a
hard-edged thriller and the cosmic concerns of a streetcorner
Dostoyevsky."
-Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
"A whodunit only in format, Samaritan is that rarity, a
novel of race relations written with authority, panache and
heart."
-Dan Cryer, Newsday
"Powerful...Wise...The novel is alive because writers like Price
are crafting books like Samaritan, about a guy who discovers
the hard way what a complicated transactions charity can be...For
all the homework that went into Clockers, Price was never a
dealer or a cop. But he has been what Ray is in Samaritan,
an intruder in other people's lives. His fellow feeling with this
character goes deep. What he knows about Ray you don't learn by
researching the streets. Instead, you prowl your own heart. It's
one more beat that Price knows how to walk with authority."
-Richard Lecayo, Time
"Without dictating Price's fiction, reality inspires his
imagination, provoking a finely detailed and immensely readable
inquiry into what might be called the double nature of
benevolence...Where a typical crime novel would traffic in
surprises and twists, Price has always eschewed the formula. The
wisdom and impact of his recent books derive from his insight into
just how unspectacular crime can be. The perpetrators in Price's
fiction act less out of passion or greed than drudgery and
shattered hope...On the narrative journey from mystery to
resolution, Price demonstrates his usual gifts for dialogue, detail
and empathetic portraiture...When a novelist stays that close to
the ground, there is no confusing illusion with
actuality...Wrenching."
-Samuel G. Freedman, Chicago Tribune (front page)
"Price is renowned for in-your-face fiction: violent, fast-paced,
yet morally complex...He's also demonstrated a flair for believable
dialogue and visual detail...[Samaritan is] another of
Price's first-rate urban morality plays-a compassionate,
politically savvy whodunit that reads like Dostoevsky circa
2003...He proves himself to be one of our best chroniclers of
big-city experience."
-Paul Evans, Book
"A full-to-bursting package held together by a strong, suspenseful
plot... Unknowability is the key to Ray Mitchell, the essence of
what makes him such a fascinating saint...Ray is preternaturally
alert, alive to the mental states of those around him. Price,
through Ray's alertness, gives even minor characters a real, if
temporary, being. And yet-and here's the miracle-because it's Ray's
alertness, the novel, though various and populous, feels centered
on his character and therefore strong. Price does this in few
words. It's not a function of I.Q. It's not articulate. It's more
like a prickling of the flesh...A demographic epic filled with
little people who command true human feeling..."
-Mark Costello, New York Times
"Price's seventh novel ranks with the best of the others...His
books have the gutsy appeal of the classiest hard-boiled mysteries:
fast pace, tripping idiomatic dialogue, unpredictable plot swerves,
zingy sex, and genuine suspense...But [Samaritan] also
possesses philosophical breadth, clearheaded social commentary, and
a fine facility with language...Price's vivid documentation may
tease us into thinking we are in Dempsy, New Jersey, but in fact we
are in existentialist territory... So quirky a mix of virtues makes
[Price] unique...Terrific."
-Lynne Sharon Schwartz, The New Leader
"[Samaritan] hurtles along like the PATH train that
traverses Price's urban landscape, weaving back and forth, before
and after the severe beating of Ray Mitchell [whose] complexity is
matched by the detective investigating the crime...Price's dialogue
rings true throughout, and his sense of place is solid and of the
moment."
-Ellen Rubin, Elle
"Price is not just a gifted writer but also one who thinks long and
hard about human behavior...We know from page one that we're in
good hands, with masterful detail, vivid scene-setting, and acutely
observed, naturalistic dialogue. The crime-solving framework pulls
us forward but is unencumbered by the pedantic detail of a police
procedural, and the depth of the characterizations is magnificent:
[The main characters] and the considerable supporting cast are
fully imagined beings who surprise us but never test our credulity.
Enmeshed in this taut storytelling is a meditation on the
complicated nature of giving, and a caution that, with
ill-considered charity, we can hurt others even when we think we're
doing them a favor. Superb."
-Keir Graff, Booklist (starred and boxed review)
"Richard Price is, without a doubt, one of our greatest living
novelists. His voice is comic, skeptical, and at all times, deeply
humane. Samaritan is a masterpiece, a novel that is actually
about-surprise of surprises-the world we live in now. Violent,
tender, hilarious, and heartbreaking, it is a world that, in
Price's hands, is so ably rendered that even its smallest truths
attain the power of universal myth."
-Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
"It seems to me that Richard Price has taken his gifts for
rendering human speech and for describing the jittery uncertainty
of life at the bottom, and created a narrative filled with the
sweet despair such as would come from angels looking down on us and
watching us suffer."
-Scott Spencer
"The great literature of the world is derived from the mean
streets, and no American writer knows them better, or can drive a
story line harder, than Richard Price. Samaritan burns, not
only with stylistic eloquence but with relentless certainty-from
each richly evocative scene, each amazingly felt character, to the
next. Price writes the way an architect builds, sketching out his
plan, thinking it over to the most minute details. Thus the
foundations of Samaritan are so fundamentally valid that its
presentation is a masterpiece of the form. Price has artfully
concealed a haunting treatise on the nuances and ambiguities of
human decency, compassion, and generosity in the guise of a
superlative thriller. Samaritan is Price's best book to
date."
-Thom Jones, author of The Pugilist at Rest
"One has come to expect from Richard Price, the most brilliant of
sardonic ironists, an eye for revelation in the commonplace, even a
kind of modern social history. But Samaritan is also a
subtle story of seduction and abandonment, of the dangerous luxury
of responsibility, and the risks that are inevitable when one is
capable of love."
-Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut
"The mastery of urban melodrama that Price demonstrated in literate
blockbusters like Clockers (1992) and Freedomland
(1998) keeps growing and deepening-as evidenced in [this] story of
a neighborhood and of conflicting ways of life...A virtuoso
alternation of advancing action with detailed flashbacks shows
how...this mystery raises troublesome ghosts from the past, while
also introducing a boldly drawn gallery of involved and potentially
guilty characters...A ferocious admixture of bleak wit and
sorrowful compassion...The story positively vibrates with Price's
trademark virtues of pinpoint observation and punchy dialogue...And
the killer climax and ironic denouement couldn't be improved upon.
Magnificent stuff. If Elmore Leonard broke out of genre and were 30
years younger, he'd be Richard Price."
-Kirkus (starred review)
"Richard Price's Samaritan is gripping, ambitious, and
resonant entertainment, everything you hope to find in an American
novel and so rarely do. This is the work of a fiercely honest
writer at the top of his game." -George Pelecanos, author of
Hell to Pay
"I read Richard Price for the cool, spare sound of his
writing, his words, the language he has in his bag that fits so
exactly in his settings. The characters talk the talk; the main
one, Nerese Ammons, a gem, 20 years a cop in the NY-NJ iron
triangle, lays open the plot, scene after scene, at a beautiful
pace. Richard Price has written a terrific novel." -Elmore
Leonard
"Samaritan blew my mind . . . I don't think anyone ever sent
me a book in hopes of a comment that was this good . . . An
absolutely riveting story. The reader is hooked from the first page
. . ." -Stephen King
"The mastery of urban melodrama that Price demonstrated in literate
blockbusters like Clockers (1992) and Freedomland
(1998) keeps growing and deepening-as evidenced in [this] story of
a neighborhood and of conflicting ways of life...A virtuoso
alternation of advancing action with detailed flashbacks shows
how...this mystery raises troublesome ghosts from the past, while
also introducing a boldly drawn gallery of involved and potentially
guilty characters...A ferocious admixture of bleak wit and
sorrowful compassion...The story positively vibrates with Price's
trademark virtues of pinpoint observation and punchy dialogue...And
the killer climax and ironic denouement couldn't be improved upon.
Magnificent stuff. If Elmore Leonard broke out of genre and were 30
years younger, he'd be Richard Price." -Kirkus (starred
review)
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