Richard Price is conflicted on crime

The same issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer that features my review of Adrian Hyland's Moonlight Downs (a.k.a. Diamond Dove) also offers my colleague Dan DeLuca's interview with Richard Price about Price's new novel, Lush Life.

"The page-turner is shaped like a police procedural," DeLuca writes, "but there's next to no mystery. When he's called a crime writer, `I hate it,' says Price ... `If I could tell you on the cover of the book who did it, I would.'"

But wait. Just because Price confuses crime and mystery does not mean he's a bad guy or a snob. DeLuca also asks Price about his job writing for The Wire:

"When Simon and Wire producer George Pelecanos (one of Price's favorite novelists, along with Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, Denis Johnson and [Dennis] Lehane) asked him to pitch in ..."

Anyone about whom favorite novelists and George Pelecanos, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane can be used in the same sentence is more comfortable with crime writing than he lets on.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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