Samaritan

After a successful L.A. television career, Ray Mitchell returns to the New Jersey housing project where he grew up - to rethink his life, reconnect with his teenage daughter, and give back to the community. Things are looking up: he's seeing a woman from the old neighborhood and teaching at his high school. But suddenly, he is found savagely beaten. He knows who did it, but won't talk. It's up to Nerese Ammons, a childhood acquaintance and now a police detective, to get Ray to tell what happened. As he slips in and out of consciousness, we enter the years in which he and Nerese encountered each other across lines of money, class, and race - the same lines Nerese must reach across now so that Ray will reveal the truth before it's too late.

Review :
"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