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Bezig met laden... The Whites (2015)door Richard Price
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. This one kept my interest, for sure. Finished the last half in one sitting. Had a hard time with so many characters that had nothing to do with the story. Also found this to be gritty and a tad bit gruesome in some ways. Not that it makes this a bad novel ... merely a warning. This definitely isn't a deep, feel good, life enhancing story. I liked the character development of the main character, Billy. The others didn't quite develop as much. At times I had a hard time remembering who the character was we were interacting with. More than once, I had to go back in the book to read again who the person was to Billy. Overall enjoyed the read, yet not one I'd recommend and definitely don't need to own. A good crime novel. I know the author from Clockers and the episodes of the Wire that he wrote. One of his strengths is his street-smart dialogue and a certain willingness to embrace crudity. I found this novel a little confusing with all of the different police officers and their different "Whites" and their Whites' families etc. It did show the value of the "X-ray" function on the Kindle. Not all books make good audio books, and “The Whites” is one example of that. To me, books with multiple characters or similarly sounding names are harder to follow when you’ve only got audio input. I found myself confused at times while listening to “The Whites”, trying to remember which of the multiple characters was which, whether the new character would be an important one or was simply a fill-in character who I could quickly forget. That said, to me the book seemed to be rambling and to contain stories with a story, more distracting to the central theme than adding to it. The basic story line involves a NYPD detective, Billy Graves, who over time suspects that members of his old police squad may have been involved in the deaths of former suspects in previous crimes. Each of those who were killed had been prime suspects in previous unsolved crimes. Also, each had been investigated by members of Graves’ former squad. In addition, as a sub-plot, members of Billy Graves family are being threatened by an unknown person. It all comes together in the end, but the journey to get there became a struggle for me. I became a fan of Price's crime novels after enjoying his writing for The Wire, and he hasn't truly let me down since. Clockers remains Price's masterpiece for many reasons, and I feel that he's never surpassed its psychological detail and sense of overwhelming pressure. The Whites (as in unjailed "white whale" perpetrators that have escaped justice but not the obsessed attention of the protagonists, not persons of Caucasian ancestry) sacrificed a bit too much of that depth of characterization in favor of an atmosphere of relentless motion (rarely have I read such a rapidly-paced novel, where each character has a decision to make or obstacle to confront on seemingly every page), and a much larger cast, to the point where you almost need a memory for names/faces as acute as those of the detectives in order to keep track of everyone. You can still expect the sharp dialogue and vivid world-building that's his trademark, but I felt that the revenge plot that's slowly revealed about a third of the way in relied too much on coincidence, side-plots, and an almost cartoonish motivation on the part of the villain. Enjoyable and even gripping on a page-by-page level but oddly unsatisfying at the end, even if no Price novel is truly unmissable for fans.
Despite its occasional lumps, this novel is, at once, a gripping police procedural and an affecting study in character and fate. PrijzenOnderscheidingenErelijsten
"Back in the bad old days, when Billy Graves worked for an anti-crime unit in Harlem known as the Wild Geese, the NYPD branded him as a cowboy. Now forty, he has somehow survived and become a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch. Mostly, his team of detectives conducts a series of holding actions--and after years in police purgatory, Billy is content simply to do his job. But soon after he gets a 3:00 a.m. call about the fatal knifing of a drunk in a Third Avenue pub, his investigation moves beyond the usual handoff to the day shift. And when he discovers that the victim was once a suspect in the unsolved murder of a 13-year-old girl, he finds himself drawn back to the late 1990s when the Wild Geese were at their most wayward. Before the case can be closed, it will severely test Billy's new sense of purpose and force him to accept that his troubled past isn't past at all. Richard Price, one of America's most gifted novelists, has always written brilliantly about cops, criminals, and New York City. Now, writing as Harry Brandt, he is poised to win a huge following among all those who hunger for first-rate crime fiction"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Deelnemer aan LibraryThing Vroege RecensentenRichard Price's boek The Whites was beschikbaar via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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But fortunately again (yea!) there's a much better second plot featuring another cop, Milton Ramos, who is introduced as everyone's nightmare of a violent, sociopathic cop, but who becomes surprisingly sympathetic and tragic throughout the story as a long-dormant campaign for vengeance for his murdered brother unfolds. Not entirely un-Ahab-like here either, you might say.
I'm not familiar with Richard Price's other work, which apparently is more literary and why he created the pen name Harry Brandt, the idea being that Brandt would get credited when Price went "slumming it" for mass market genre popularity. I have no context in which to judge a work in this genre, it being one I never touch; in general, I'd say okay, it's fine, and credit the Tournament of Books with again getting me to read something I'd never pick up otherwise.
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