Clockers: A Novel

Rocco Klein, a veteran homicide detective in a city across the river from Manhattan, has lost his appetite for the thrill of the street. When a warm June night brings yet another drug murder, Rocco has no sense that the case is anything special. A twenty-year-old steps forward to confess, but a little digging reveals that he’s never been in any kind of trouble, whereas his brother runs a crew of street-corner cocaine dealers—“clockers”—in a nearby housing project. Soon Rocco is sure that Victor Dunham is innocent, sure that his brother Strike is the real killer, and suddenly Rocco’s hunger for the job is back.

Driven and shrewd, Strike uses violence when he has to, but his primary concern is survival. He has been clocking for almost a year; if he could somehow move up to the ounce business, he might get off the street before it breaks him. But then Rocco Klein begins hounding him, and Strike’s life becomes a nightmare.

At once an explosive murder mystery and a riveting portrait of two lives on a collision course, Clockers is a spectacular achievement, a harrowing but vital portrait of city life.