THE WHITES: RICHARD PRICE

Another gritty crime novel, set in the NYPD in the mid 1990's. Sergeant Billy Graves is one of four Wild Geese, a group of police who worked together in the 1980's.  Now, of the four, two are retired, and Billy runs the Night Watch, easier in some ways then the days except for being called late at night.  Whites refers to the cases where an officer knows who did the crime but the perp was able to weasel out of the conviction, thus the white whales that got away.  Each one of the Wild Geese has a certain someone they would like to see dead.  And they begin to turn up dead, for no reason except that Billy, still a cop, knows the story behind each of the perp's death, knows that one of the Wild Geese is involved, and must decide how to deal with it.

When one of the Wild Geese's cases is slashed at a subway stop, Billy knows that something's up, that this is not accidental, that it's premeditated, most likely by one of the Wild Geese, all his good friends.  The story then follows his life, as a cop, as he works various night cases and at the some time, tries to figure out who was involved in the subway killing. He finally pins it on one of his buddies, but must decide what to do about it, whether to turn him in for breaking law or let him go because the victim was guilty of an earlier crime, just not convicted.

And, Billy is not a virgin either, having beaten a case earlier in his career when he accidentally killed a young boy when he was high but was able to beat it, by having his buddies lie, destroying the life of the reporter who got it right but could not prove it.  And, of course, she ends up being his friend, helps him decide what to do about the slaying.  If you want a clear picture of what it's like to be a cop in New York City, this is worth reading.  Life is not easy for these guys; they feel pressure from within and without, always on the edge of doing something right or wrong, depending on what side of the fence you sit.

This novel got good reviews, mostly because Price is considered step above your usual crime novelist.  I can't say that I loved it but I like enough to read it to the end.  And I felt that Price knows his stuff, the moral ambiguity of being a police officer in a dirty department and city, how your cases run you, that you are always struggling to keep your humanity in a often violent, evil, murky world of city crime.  The right choice is never clear; justice may be served but not it's not always what's right. Whether at the end, Billy makes the right choice is up to the reader.