≫ Download Free The Whites A Novel eBook Richard Price Harry Brandt

The Whites A Novel eBook Richard Price Harry Brandt

Download As PDF : The Whites A Novel eBook Richard Price Harry Brandt

The Whites A Novel eBook Richard Price Harry Brandt

"The Whites" is excellent - great storytelling, very enjoyable reading. Gritty, with a very New York feel to it on every page. It's Price's ninth book; the first was published in 1974. Most of his books take place in the NY/NJ region. So, what's a 'white'? It seems every long time cop has one case that haunts him. For whatever reasons, the perp of some horrific, fatal crime has gotten off scot-free from justice. Maybe it's the shooting of three young girls, or chasing a scared immigrant kid into the path of an oncoming bus. These crimes and those responsible are never forgotten. The lead cops keep tabs on the killers (the Whites) on a regular basis, and they maintain contact with the victims' families. They are obsessed with their own White.

Billy Graves is the only member of his team of five who has remained on the force. But he stays in contact with the others and regularly meets with them to keep tabs - and to discuss their Whites. And then, one of the Whites is killed.....But it's not all about the Whites. We also get to know Billy's family, his nurse wife, the two school age boys, his dad, a former cop, now drifting in and out of dementia episodes. The descriptions of their daily struggles to make ends meet and keep a family together, and safe, is as fascinating as the tales of Billy's crime scenes on the midnight shift. Then there's the guy who accosts one of the boys after school, giving him a friendly pat on the back, but leaving a very red hand print on the back of the jacket, a message for Mom and Dad.

The plot and characters are excellent, the story is well paced. And the prose....Let me give you just one example - let me set the scene. Billy is talking to Yasmeen, one of his former cops, when she gets a call from her young daughter, crying about a little boy who is always pinching her. Yasmeen tells her daughter to put the offender, Jacob, on the phone right now: "Is this Jacob? This is Simone's mommy. Listen to me, you know that monster that lives under your bed? Your parents tell you he's not real, but they're lying to you. Not only is he real but he's a friend of mine, and if you lay one more hand on my daughter I will make sure he comes out from under there when you're asleep tonight and sucks your eyeballs right out of your head, you hear me? Yes? Good. Now give the phone back to Simone....Stop crying and give the phone back to Simone."

I am now a big Richard Price fan. Think I'll read "Clockers" next. Or maybe "Freedomland", or.......


Tags : Amazon.com: The Whites: A Novel eBook: Richard Price, Harry Brandt: Kindle Store,ebook,Richard Price, Harry Brandt,The Whites: A Novel,Henry Holt and Co.,137201 Holt Adult-Holt TC,AMERICAN MYSTERY & SUSPENSE FICTION,Cold cases (Criminal investigation),FICTION Mystery & Detective Police Procedural,FICTION Mystery & Detective Police Procedural.,FICTION Thrillers Crime,FICTION Thrillers Suspense,Fiction,Fiction - Espionage Thriller,Fiction-Thriller,FictionThrillers - Crime,GENERAL,General Adult,Murder - Investigation,Mystery & Detective Police Procedural,Mystery fiction,Mystery fiction.,MysterySuspense,New York (N.Y.),Police,Thriller suspense,Thrillers - Crime,Thrillers - Suspense,United States,bisacsh,new york fiction; crime thrillers; thriller books; mystery thriller books; crime novels; crime books; crime mystery books; thriller novels; book thriller; books thrillers; mysteries and thrillers; mystery and thrillers; murder mystery; murder mystery books; new york crime fiction; new york novels; police procedurals; police detective; police fiction; police books; detective novels; mystery detective,FICTION Thrillers Crime,FICTION Thrillers Suspense,FictionThrillers - Crime,Mystery & Detective Police Procedural,Thrillers - Crime,Thrillers - Suspense,Fiction - Espionage Thriller,American Mystery & Suspense Fiction,bisacsh,Fiction,MysterySuspense,Thriller suspense

The Whites A Novel eBook Richard Price Harry Brandt Reviews

I don't think star ratings for serious novels are fair, but this is 's system, so .....

This novel is very well done. It is structurally sound. It carefully builds tension. It keeps you guessing -- about a lot of things -- and gives you the satisfaction of watching the narrative pieces click into place at the appropriate time.

Many of the reviews remark on the confusion created by the number of characters. That is a valid comment, and I did experience that sense of character overload at about page 50. I had to scroll back through what I had read. Once I did that, however, I never had to do it again. What makes the characters somewhat confusing is that there are two groups of characters 1) the "night shift" cops that Billy, the main narrator, works with at the time the story is being told, and 2) the cops Billy used to work with in the 70s, known as the "Wild Geese." It is not a spoiler to point out that the two worlds ultimately converge, as they should.

A further potential source of confusion is the second narrator, Milton Ramos. Chapters narrated by Ramos are always titled "Milton Ramos," so the author is merciful in that regard. From my recollection (it's been a couple of months), the first Ramos chapter pops up at about page 50, which gives the reader the sense of, "Whoa, I'm just starting to sort out the rest of the characters, and now this?". But, again, the saving grace is the structural soundness of the novel, and the Milton Ramos element will integrate into the narrative with the satisfying 'click' that is the reward for a patient and diligent reader.

So why only three stars? There are too many great books. This is a very good one of its kind.
Originally, Richard Price planned on releasing The Whites under the pen name "Harry Brandt," saying that he wanted to separate the novel's more commercial, plot-driven aspects from his usual writing. It's a decision he didn't stick with, obviously, and has made numerous jokes about, remarking in one interview that he realized that the novel would be just "another damn book by me" too late into the process.

All of which is to say, it's not surprising that The Whites feels like an uneasy union between a traditional hard-boiled police procedural and Price's more thoughtful, internally driven novels focused on social factors. The hook is pulpy enough - an NYPD detective named Billy Graves starts realizing that numerous "white whales" (hence the title) that have gotten away with horrible crimes on various technicalities keep turning up dead, and starts investigating - and once you mix in the way that another officer begins slowly stalking and terrorizing Graves and his family in payback for a long-ago crime, you've got a pulpy setup for revenge and hard-boiled retribution.

But that's not really entirely Price's style, and while The Whites gives us a good mystery to hang onto and some tightly paced thrills, Price keeps turning the novel into something more complex and introspective, making us understand not only the appeal for revenge but turning it into a question that touches on religion, divine purpose, and a lack of justice in the world. And while Price never comes across as pro-vigilante justice, he never forgets the way that grief can impact people and tear apart families, leading to victims not only of the original crimes, but victims of the rippling consequences that spread out from them. And, as if that's not complicated enough, Price realizes that you can't take on the idea of murdered suspects without taking on questions about police brutality, racial profiling, and more, and while The Whites never quite dives into those aspects fully, they undeniably linger around the edges of the novel, informing the debates and shaping characters' reactions to what's going on.

With all of that thrown into the mix, as you might imagine, The Whites turns from a pulpy revenge thriller into something far more complex, and that juxtaposition doesn't always entirely work. Price's work often works best when he lets his characters drive the story, keeping the plots simple and allowing internal monologues and psychological complexities be the hook for our story. Here, The Whites sometimes struggles to hold up under the weight of its characters, as though Price really wanted to deliver a nasty noir novel and instead couldn't help but turn it into a character study in which these people's decisions are rendered in all of their complexity and nuance.

That all may make for an uneasy marriage of elements, but it also means that The Whites is a rich, engrossing novel, even if its one that feels like its story is holding it back some. (For instance, it's worth noting that the novel's best scene involves an interrogation sequence which has no bearing on either of the main plot threads, and yet whose emotional impact has stuck with me for many days, long after I finished the book.) But maybe that's the best thing about The Whites; what you're expecting is a lurid noir tale, but what you get is something more sophisticated, more nuanced, and more complicated, giving us not archetypes but people, not bloodless murders but awful crimes, not easy motivations but complex reasoning, and not easy answers but instead an awful uncertainty. Maybe that's what makes it a better book than you'd expect it to be.
"The Whites" is excellent - great storytelling, very enjoyable reading. Gritty, with a very New York feel to it on every page. It's Price's ninth book; the first was published in 1974. Most of his books take place in the NY/NJ region. So, what's a 'white'? It seems every long time cop has one case that haunts him. For whatever reasons, the perp of some horrific, fatal crime has gotten off scot-free from justice. Maybe it's the shooting of three young girls, or chasing a scared immigrant kid into the path of an oncoming bus. These crimes and those responsible are never forgotten. The lead cops keep tabs on the killers (the Whites) on a regular basis, and they maintain contact with the victims' families. They are obsessed with their own White.

Billy Graves is the only member of his team of five who has remained on the force. But he stays in contact with the others and regularly meets with them to keep tabs - and to discuss their Whites. And then, one of the Whites is killed.....But it's not all about the Whites. We also get to know Billy's family, his nurse wife, the two school age boys, his dad, a former cop, now drifting in and out of dementia episodes. The descriptions of their daily struggles to make ends meet and keep a family together, and safe, is as fascinating as the tales of Billy's crime scenes on the midnight shift. Then there's the guy who accosts one of the boys after school, giving him a friendly pat on the back, but leaving a very red hand print on the back of the jacket, a message for Mom and Dad.

The plot and characters are excellent, the story is well paced. And the prose....Let me give you just one example - let me set the scene. Billy is talking to Yasmeen, one of his former cops, when she gets a call from her young daughter, crying about a little boy who is always pinching her. Yasmeen tells her daughter to put the offender, Jacob, on the phone right now "Is this Jacob? This is Simone's mommy. Listen to me, you know that monster that lives under your bed? Your parents tell you he's not real, but they're lying to you. Not only is he real but he's a friend of mine, and if you lay one more hand on my daughter I will make sure he comes out from under there when you're asleep tonight and sucks your eyeballs right out of your head, you hear me? Yes? Good. Now give the phone back to Simone....Stop crying and give the phone back to Simone."

I am now a big Richard Price fan. Think I'll read "Clockers" next. Or maybe "Freedomland", or.......