With Price's latest novel, Lush Life, Kakutani's praise is far from isolated. Entertainment Weekly gave it an A, calling it "outstanding." The Miami Herald noted that it "doesn't lag for even a sentence." Paste magazine adds: "If you don't know Price yet, this book is a great entry. You'll leave the space most authors occupy and move into the realm of masterpiece."

The dialogue in the prologue alone is so sharp and irresistible, I had to reread it twice more before embarking on the novel proper, just to savor its lyrical perfection. And, yes, I confess: I read much of it out loud. This is the kind of dialogue actors pray for a chance to chew on. (Small wonder that Price has written for HBO's acclaimed series The Wire.)

When Kirkus raves, "There oughta be a law requiring Richard Price to publish more frequently. Because nobody does it better," we're inclined to agree.
 

Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price "Price peels back the layers of his characters and the neighborhood until all is laid bare. With its perfect dialogue and attention to the smallest detail, Price's latest reminds readers why he's one of the masters of American urban crime fiction." Publishers Weekly (starred review) "[O]utstanding....[T]his big, powerful novel belongs to all of [the characters], and, like The Wire, its real protagonist is the complicated, tragic, and endlessly fascinating American city street. (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly List Price $26.00 Your Price: $21.00 (Sale - Hardcover) More about this book/ check for other copies Clockers: A Novel by Richard Price "A vital and bold novel rich in unexpected pleasure, with Price generally avoiding melodrama, sentimentality, and stereotype to portray a harsh world with clear-eyed compassion." Kirkus Reviews "One hell of a book." Washington Post Book World More about this book/ check for other copies Samaritan by Richard Price "The crime-solving framework pulls us forward but is unencumbered by the pedantic detail of a police procedural, and the depth of the characterizations is magnificent....Superb." Booklist (starred review) "Samaritan blew my mind....An absolutely riveting story. The reader is hooked from the first page." Stephen King Your Price: $14.00 (New - Trade Paper) More about this book/ check for other copies Freedomland by Richard Price "A big, cinemascope thriller...a novel that transforms today's headlines into a forceful, harrowing drama....[A] terrific read...Price has written his most powerful novel yet." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times List Price $7.99 Your Price: $4.95 (Used - Mass Market) More about this book/ check for other copies The Wanderers by Richard Price "[A] superbly written book about coming of age in a section of the Bronx....Richard Price has the empathy and objectivity of a true artist..." Hubert Selby Jr., The New York Times Book Review Your Price: $14.95 (New - Trade Paper) More about this book/ check for other copies The Wire: The Complete Third Season "TV's richest, most satisfying experience....It's no wonder novelists like Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos...have written scripts for this season... (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly "The breadth and ambition of The Wire are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season — any season — it's an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era." San Francisco Chronicle List Price $59.99 Your Price: $52.56 (New - Dvd) More about this book/ check for other copies

Bolton: Lush Life is coming out in four days. After this many books, do you still get nervous?

Richard Price: Yeah. It takes a long time to do a book, so you're out of the eye of judgment for a long time.

Bolton: A lot of your previous interviews opened up by asking why you set so many of your books in the fictional city of Dempsy, New Jersey [the setting for Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan]. Instead, I'll ask why you didn't set Lush Life in Dempsy.

Price: Because the neighborhood of the Lower East Side was the main character, and the whole point was to write about that place. To fictionalize it would have defeated the purpose.

Bolton: Is this an area that you're intimately familiar with?

Price: Yeah, you know, it's probably the most important slum in American history. As of about 1880, it was where everybody went from Ellis Island — and then, over the generations, proceeded outwards and upwards. There are probably more people in American history of a non-WASP background, and non-African American background, that started out in the Lower East Side than anywhere.

Bolton: There's that incredible moment in Lush Life when Eric Cash is down in the basement under the restaurant and he finds the writing on the beam. He feels a historical connection with the people who have been there before him. Was that something you had found?

Price: No, I made that up. But there are places like that, where you can go in cellars and see the evidence that some people had lived here a hundred years ago. There are some Jacob Riis photos of people living like that. But the whole graffitti, that's why they call it fiction.

Bolton: What inspired you to write Lush Life?

Price: I've always wanted to write about the Lower East Side. My family started out there — most families I know with a New York background did — and I just couldn't find a way in for decades. When I had children and they came of high school and college age, the Lower East Side became totally revamped into this sort of playground for middle-class bohemians. They discovered it on their own, but I don't think they had any real connection to the history of the place. So the irony is, there was a five-generation full circle, where people started out in desperate straits a hundred years ago; and a hundred years later, their fifth-generation great-grandchildren are down there going to clubs. And that sort of got me going.

Bolton: Did you have your protagonist in mind from the beginning? It's such a large cast and the perspective shifts so many times.

Price: I didn't really know what to do. I was down there for about a year, circling around trying to find a story. As often happens... you know, homicide is sort of a lazy plotter's way through a very complicated landscape, because then you just follow a criminal investigation and it imposes order on chaos. There were a couple of confrontations down there over the years between these arriviste-type kids and the kids that are sort of the third-world people who have been down there for at least half a century and have no idea what's going on or what's happened to the Lower East Side.

Bolton: Was the writing of this book different from your previous novels since Clockers?

Price: Not really. It involved the same process of spending time and absorbing stuff out on the street. Just putting everything into the back of my head. It was about a three-year process, which unfortunately every book is turning into. But it was the same M.O.

Bolton: In your acknowledgements, you thanked the Seventh Precinct. Did you do a lot of research with them?

Price: Yeah, among others. I didn't spend any more time with the cops than I did with the people who live in the neighborhood. I also spent an equal amount of time with people in the restaurant industry down there, people in the projects, social workers... There's a whole generation of kids who live there that I know through my own kids. But [the Seventh Precinct], of all the people, were the ones who didn't have to show me around, so I thought a special shout-out should have gone to them.

Bolton: When you're writing dialogue for a sixteen-year-old kid in the projects, do you do any sort of fact-checking? Do you run it by anyone?

Price: No, I just make that stuff up. All the dialogue is made up. The worst thing you can do is try to go around like a sociologist and record a glossary of slang. It's so mobile, it changes by the time you get it in print, it's so outdated it's embarrassing, so I just make up my own.

Bolton: In your writing process, do you do a lot of outlining, or multiple drafts?

Price: Yeah, both. There's a lot of obsessive procrastination, building up momentum to the point where you feel like, Okay, now I'm going to write. I can't hem and haw anymore.

Bolton: Do you do any special work to get inside the characters' heads?

Price: Every writer does. You imagine lives not your own.

Bolton: I was recently watching season two of The Wire on DVD. In the scene where D'Angelo Barksdale is in his prison writing class, the camera panned to the teacher, who looked pretty familiar. Was that your first cameo?

Price: No, I've done twelve movies.

Bolton: And you did a cameo in all of them?

Price: Roles of about that size. It's more like a goof than anything.

Bolton: How did you get involved with The Wire? Were you writing for it at that point?

Price: No. [Series creator] David Simon told me The Wire was kind of based on Clockers. I knew David Simon, and after two seasons he approached me and asked if I wanted to come and write for them. I really didn't want to do it, because I felt this show was way beyond the stuff that I understand, and I didn't know how much I could contribute to it. But you're covered pretty well, so I got involved.

Bolton: What was it like working on the same staff with Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos? Was there any competitiveness?

Price: No, not at all. It was a pleasure. I was rarely in the same room with Pelecanos, and was never in the same room with Lehane. We each had our episodes. You go down to Baltimore, discuss your episode with the producers, and decide what has to be done. But if Pelecanos's episode is not until another three down the line, you're not gonna be there.

Bolton: It seems like Lush Life has somewhat of a faster, more taut pace than the last few novels. Did your work on The Wire influence your style in any way?

Price: No, not at all. TV does not influence novels — at least with me, it doesn't.

Bolton: Was that something stylistically that you were trying out?

Price: As you get older, you evolve. You tend to try to de-clutter. You tend to streamline, as opposed to becoming more elaborate.

Bolton: Are you working on any new projects now?

Price: I'm adapting a book for Ridley Scott called Child 44. I've been working on that for a couple of months, and I'm supposed to write an original TV pilot for FX, if I ever got done with Child 44.

Bolton: Is there a film adaptation of Lush Life in the works?

Price: There's interest from certain parties, but nothing definite.

Bolton: Do you have a favorite of the novels you've written?

Price: I'd like to think whatever I write last was the best; otherwise, I'm getting worse. [Laughter] I don't know, I'm reading these reviews of Lush Life and it sounds like it's my favorite. [Laughter]

Bolton: The reviews are amazing. Kirkus said, "There oughta be a law requiring Richard Price to publish more frequently."

Price: I wish there was. I'd be writing more frequently. [Laughter]

Bolton: Barring any changes in the law, do you have another book brewing now?

Price: Not right now. I'm a little busy selling this one.

Bolton: Is there anything you've been reading lately that's knocked you out?

Price: There are two or three books I really like: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and I guess it's a little late in the game to say this, but Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.

Bolton: Do you read very many novels in your own style, other police procedurals?

Price: Not when I'm writing. I don't think of myself as a crime or genre writer. I never made a study of the genre. I try to avoid all that. I might read those books for fun, but if somebody has a writing style similar to mine, I'd rather avoid that when I'm writing.

Richard Price spoke to us via phone on February 29, 2008.