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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862295.Lush_Life?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lush Life" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1189374634m/1862295.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862295.Lush_Life?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lush Life</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16481.Richard_Price">Richard Price</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/18666647?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>I came around to gradually regard the work of Richard Price -- surely one of America's best crime novelists if not the best -- in a very backwards fashion. Like many (well, some), I saw Spike Lee's movie adaptation of Price's Clockers years ago, and I faintly recall quick-reading the original novel without realizing quite what I had. Fast-forward to years later, with Price and several other heavy-hitters contributing to HBO's outstanding drama The Wire, which kept me captivated to the very end, very interested in the names behind it, and very eager for something to fill the void after the smoke cooled from watching The Wire's devastating finale. Such led me to catch up once again with Mr. Price, who I am primed at last to truly appreciate. Price's novel Lush Life is, then, the first of his that I've REALLY read, and it's hard to remember a novel in recent memory that I've been so absorbed by. Not only does Lush Life contain Price's sharp, acerbic dialogue (best represented by a number of virtuosic police interrogation scenes) but it offers a compelling portrait of the clash of two New Yorks: the homogenized post-Guliani adult playland of bistros and bars, overlapping with the older, more dangerous tradition of criminal activity which spills out from over the poverty line. Price's new work begins as a police procedural illustrating, above all else, how an innocent suspect who acts guilty can really, really mess up a murder investigation, and ends as something different, a painted novel with filled-in detail from all corners of Price's beloved Lower East Side. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/851534?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>