East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day's end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster.
Gritty and compassionate ... Price has clearly inherited their storytelling chops, then fine-tuned those skills by persuading police to let him ride shotgun as research. He has an ear for streetwise dialogue and an eye for description. He can size up people with a phrase ... Not a cynical novel.
His books, including the new Lazarus Man, are also masterworks of character, atmosphere, symbolism and whatever else those scribes over in the supposedly higher-tone literature section might throw at you ... Price...remains one of the most rewarding, compulsively readable fiction writers around.
