Richard Price, author of Clockers and other novels that cover cops, crooks, and city life, offers a new story of a small group of New York City cops who, like Ahab, have personal white whales that obsess them. That's the key to the title: The "Whites" are heinous criminals who get off scot-free, thereby becoming obsessions for the cops involved in the investigations.
Price opens The Whites well, quickly establishing the late-night urban atmosphere and the main character's cop-world point-of-view: "As Billy Graves drove down Second Avenue to work, the crowds worried him: a quarter past one in the morning and there were still far more people piling into bars than leaving them, everyone coming and going having to muscle their way through the swaying clumps of half-hammered smokers standing directly outside the entrances."
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