Review: Richard Price's Lush Life

Because news is slow towards the end of the week, and because I figured reviews might make an entertaining source for new posts, here’s my take on Richard Price’s crime novel (recently published in paperback!), which, contrary to common belief, holds little information on Lushs. It might go without saying, but don’t go traipsing drunk at 3 a.m. in New York. At least, that’s the (or, for the more meaningful of you, a) moral of Lush Life, which concerns itself with the fallout of a black shoots white killing.

The book begs to be read out loud, as Price writes the dialogue with snappy precision and creative-yet-not-far-fetched names abound. The plot, (which I’ll not describe here, go find another review for that, or better yet, just read the book itself, is full of twists and turns, but I found the overall mystery quotient to be lacking. We don’t need Sherlock Holmes to solve this one, but Price doesn’t seem to care.

The most fascinating thing about Lush Life is its vast array of characters. The major protagonists are well-rendered, though some subplots are under-developed. As an example, a principle police officer is distracted by some serious shenanigans perpetrated by his loser kids, yet doesn’t seem to take a keen interest in their survival. At least, not compared to the amount of attention he lavishes on the father of the crime victim…

This doesn’t stop the enjoyment of the myriad cast, however, most of whom are dolloped with just enough desciption to let their personalities ooze their way off the page and into your mind. The pair of class-skipping schoolboys are standouts, as they receive a small amount of page time yet seem as well-rounded as the detectives we follow around.

If there are any other flaws in Price’s book, it’s that there are times when the novel seems to have gone on a bender. Events, like a gigantic funeral march, happen that don’t seem realistic considering the relatively common nature of the crime. Also, the grieving father becomes just about the best spy I’ve ever known, as he’s able to evade his family and the police constantly, before randomly appearing wherever the characters happen to be.

Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and wound up reading it cover-to-cover in a single weekend. 480 pages, but so chocked full of dialogue that it goes down faster than a New York-style pizza at bar-close. Get it, read it.