Clockers - Richard Price

Rocco Klein, veteran homicide detective, has had enough of life on the edge. When a warm summer night brings yet another drug-related murder, he has no sense that the case is anything special. A young black man steps forward to confess but a little digging reveals that he's never been in any kind of trouble, whereas his half-brother Strike runs a crew of street-corner coke dealers—'clockers'—in a nearby housing project. Soon Rocco is sure that Strike is the real killer—and suddenly Rocco's appetite for the job is back. With a vengeance...

Richard Price spent four years with dealers and cops on the violent mean streets of urban America, risking his life while researching the raw material of this outstanding novel. The result is a work of such powerful authenticity that all other recent stories of city-jungle life pale into insignificance beside it.