In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of “Clockers” and a writer on “The Wire”, shines a light in every corner of New York City.
Boom! A June morning on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem. Suddenly, where a five-story building had stood is nothing but fuming low hills of rubble, the cars parked in front pancaked and coated in ash. Sirens. Havoc. Confusion. Destruction. And people missing.
Richard Price, our greatest chronicler of the city today, describes the effect of the disaster on the outer and inner lives of a rich and compelling group of characters. Anthony Walker is pulled from the rubble and, miraculously, survives, to find himself inspired by a religious sense of mission. Royal Lyons, who owns a failing funeral parlor, discovers a new lease on life. And Mary Roe, a hard-bitten NYPD detective, embarks on a personal quest to find a man who is missing.
Rich with indelible characters and incredible drama, “Lazarus Man” is a compelling work of suspense and social vision by one of our preeminent writers.
"Price delivers a remarkable excavation of urban angst in this story of a five-story East Harlem tenement building that collapses . . . As [Price's] vivid characters cross paths following the tragedy, they compose a searing snapshot of contemporary Harlem annotated with the author's precise observations . . . Price once again proves he's the bard of New York City street life."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Half a century after launching an astonishing career that includes some of the best crime writing for books and screens, Price has let the mercy in his stories rise to the surface. On the margins, bullets still fly and drugs still flow, but the deadly alleys of Clockers and The Wire give way here to a community just trying to account for its dead and find a way forward . . . For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers: a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life . . . Presented in two long sections with a preface and an afterword, the novel remains in relentless motion."
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Gritty and compassionate . . . [Price] has an ear for streetwise dialogue and an eye for description . . . A chorus of voices enlivens every page in a kind of urban opera."
