This being Richard Price, whatever it says on the cover - we'll get to that in a moment - I thought I'd better keep a note of the characters just to try to get them straight in my mind, I knew there'd be a whole phalanx of them, detectives, perps, victims, family members, ex-family members, ex-detectives, witnesses, slingers, dog walkers, sex workers, hopheads - so here's the list I made 
 Billy Graves 
 Joon 
 Emmett Butter 
 Gene Feeley 
 Alice Stupak 
 Roger Mayo 
 Rollie Towers Aka The Wheel 
 Theodore Moretti 
 Eddie Lopez 
 Charlene Carter 
 Horace Woody 
 Carla Garrett 
 Jeffrey Bannion 
 Thomas Rivera 
 Eugene Bannion 
 John Pavilcek 
 Carmen Graves 
 Declan And Carols Graves 
 Millie Singh 
 Jimmy Whelan 
 Yasmin Assaf-Doyle 
 Redman Brown 
 Brian Tomassi 
 Sweetpea Harris 
 Eric Cortez 
 Curtis Taft 
 Tonya Howard 
 Memori Williams 
 Dreena Bailey 
 Milton Ramos 
 Ray Rivera 
 Nora Rivera 
 Esteban Appleyard 
 Stephen Cunliffe 
 Wallice Oliver 
 Stacey Taylor 
 Carlos Hernandez 
 Billy Graves Senior 
 Victor Acosta 
 Richard Kubin 
 Antoine Davis-Bey 
 Salaam Pridgen 
 Dennis Doyle 
 Raymond Del Pino 
 Shakira Barker 
 Patricia Taft 
 Martha Timberwolf 
 Michael Reidy 
 Elvis Perez 
 Stanley Treestes 
 Edna Worthy 
 That's up to around page 80, I stopped the list after that, it was getting exhausting. If you find yourself in this novel, I won't be surprised. I guess cops really meet a lot of people, they have whole townships of the dead and the living mooching around in their mental lobes. Me, I remember the names of around seven people, and I forget two of those usually. I'm not good with names. 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE TRANSPARENT PSEUDONYM 
 What's with this thing on the cover : "Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt" ? So apparently, the Times, tells us, : 
 He wanted to inoculate himself against literary critics who might sneer at him for writing a slicker, more commercial book. He was already late on delivering a separate novel ... and hoped to hide the fact that he was moonlighting. And he wanted to see if he could write a stripped-down, heavily plotted best seller, without sacrificing his literary credentials. 
 The article explains that he found it a drag competing against himself. Okay, I dig that, because I have actually read 3 of his last 4, Freedomland, Lush Life and Clockers, and they are all monumental - vast books about one particular case examined in 700 small font page detail. So I get that he may have wished to change gear. But plenty of other writers do that, they have whole different types of books they write, look at Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates, doesn't bother those guys, they chuck it all out with the one name on the cover. The article quotes Mr Price 
 "It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and now I wish I hadn't done it," he said. "This pen name is like pulling a rabbit out of a glass hat." 
 Well, I wish he hadn't either, it's silly. Although I maybe should have done the pseudonym thing for some of my own more lunatic reviews. I can see the benefit. Could have avoided a lot of flack. Anyway. 
 THE WHITES? 
 Yes, a rather unnecessarily provocative title, since it's got nowt to do with white people. The cops, apparently, refer to criminals who've got away with major crimes due to lack of evidence or the death of witnesses as whites, and that's what this book is about. 
 A QUOTE 
 Castro inhaled again, blew out enough smoke to announce a pope. 
 HOMICIDE-FLAVOURED ICE CREAM 
 Any Richard Price fan will already be reading this and will not be disappointed, and any Wire fan (Mr Price wrote a few of those shows) who is not yet a Richard Price fan is advised to scoop up this like a new piquant New York homicide-flavoured ice cream. You get a hectic ride all right, although truth be told this more plot-driven style novel only gets going around page 100, but that's okay. By the end, every loose end is tied up, every dark motive brought to the light, it's positively Victorian. The body count is high. There's nothing not to like here.