There are writers --- and then there are writers. We all have our
favorites. There are times when you slap yet another metal sticky
note onto your crowded psyche as a reminder to pick up a copy of
something you read about in the book section of the newspaper ---
and then there are those other times. You're headed down the
freeway listening to an NPR program when you learn that a certain
writer has a new book out. You very calmly but deliberately cut the
wheel hard to the left with one hand, yank the emergency brake
lever with the other and execute a perfect bootlegger turn across
the grassy median in order to take the shortest route to the
nearest bookstore. Once you're home with your new prize, you read
with such intensity that, hours after you've turned the last page,
your eyes still can't properly focus on anything more than a foot
away from your face.

I don't know who that writer is for you, but for me it's Richard
Price. When I heard that the author of CLOCKERS and FREEDOMLAND
(and the screenwriter behind a very respectable selection of
screenplays, including THE COLOR OF MONEY and MAD DOG AND GLORY)
had a new book out, I knew that I'd be putting in my time as a book
zombie. No problem. Like CLOCKERS and FREEDOMLAND, SAMARITAN is set
in the city of Dempsey, New Jersey, a kind of East Coast every-town
--- run down, ragged and carrying the post-industrial scars that
are all that remain after the good times have gone elsewhere. And
as with those two previous novels, the various threads of the story
at the heart of SAMARITAN converge in the grimy buildings and
littered playgrounds of the Hopewell housing project. The
multifaceted and richly detailed story centers on two characters
whose common history begins in the Hopewell projects.

Ray Mitchell, local-boy-made-good, has returned to Dempsey after a
successful stint as a television writer --- a job he landed only
after kicking a cocaine habit that cost him his marriage and left
him estranged from his thirteen year-old daughter, who now lives
with her mother in Manhattan, the skyline of which is visible from
the balcony of Ray's apartment in the Dempsey suburbs. Ray's return
to Dempsey is part of an effort to re-establish a relationship with
his daughter, an effort that includes plans to give something back
to the neighborhood of his youth.

Nerese Ammons, on the other hand, never left Dempsey. In her job as
a police detective, she is never far from Hopewell and the poverty,
drug addiction and violence that marred her own childhood and left
her a single mother. She stoically managed the responsibilities of
raising a teenaged son and accepted with willingness and a touch of
philosophy the additional burden of caring for members of an
extended family inherited from her absent, unlamented
husband.

When Ray is found brutally beaten and barely alive in his
apartment, Nerese, weeks away from retirement and escape to a new
life in Florida, takes the case, her interest fueled by the sliver
of preadolescent history she shares with Ray. But her investigation
is hampered by Ray's refusal to name his assailant. So there's a
mystery here to be sure and a darn good one. But there is so much
depth and detail to SAMARITAN that to label it a mystery is like
describing the Sistine Chapel as a building with a nice
ceiling.

At its core, SAMARITAN is an examination of the awesome
responsibility inherent in the role of the parent. It is about how,
in dealing with that responsibility --- successfully or otherwise
--- every person acting in that role adds to the collection of
stories that will ultimately define who he or she is and who his or
her children will become. Ray Mitchell, a man who understands and
values stories, knows that his own story needs a bit of nudging to
get it back on course to something resembling a happy ending. In
this pursuit he volunteers to teach creative writing to a group of
students at his old high school, pro bono. He speaks passionately
to his students about the value of the stories in their lives and
his message resonates with a few. But even as he makes headway with
his students, Ray's ability to truly connect with his daughter is
hobbled by his desperate need to be liked. And while his daughter
is a willing and eager audience for the tales of his youth, Ray,
for all his talent and skill, can't penetrate to the truth of his
own story.

When Ray learns that an old school acquaintance doesn't have the
money to bury her son, a victim of drug abuse, he and his daughter
visit the woman in her Hopewell apartment and he presents her with
a check, hoping that his daughter has taken notice of his
extraordinary generosity. Though heartfelt and genuine, Ray's act
of kindness, one of many in the story, is motivated by
self-conscious needs so acute that they blind him to the
responsibilities that go hand in hand with such generosity. It is
this blindness that will leave Ray beaten and bleeding on the floor
of his apartment and send Nerese Ammons on the trail of the person
who put him in that condition.

SAMARITAN, indeed a first-rate mystery, has something important to
say, but it eases its message out drop by drop in doses so
carefully controlled that the ultimate impact is at once surprising
and obvious. Richard Price has demonstrated once again a profound
and often chilling understanding of what is inside our heads and a
masterful ability to translate that unimaginable complexity into
compact, highly readable prose.