There was much rejoicing when the book fairy delivered Richard Price’s new novel Lush Life (Bloomsbury) to the Revelatorium. Mr Price, author of The Wanderers, Clockers, Freedomland and the masterful Samaritan, is one of those extraordinary crime writers who combines high literary chops with lowdown street argot and commands the kind of peer approbation usually reserved for Cormac McCarthy or Denis Johnson.
He’s had quite a run of it as a screenwriter too, having scripted Scorsese’s The Color Of Money and the sorely overlooked short film Life Lessons (starring Nick Nolte as a big bear of an abstract expressionist painter), plus Pacino’s comeback picture Sea Of Love, and more recently HBO’s The Wire.

We’ll give you the lowdown on the new book soon as we’ve read it. Meantime, here’s our 2003 interview.

Here’s Michiko Kakutani’s verdict on Lush Life in the New York Times.

And here’s Michael Chabon’s review.