Clockers

The New York Times–bestselling author’s “harrowing” novel about a cop and a crack dealer—the basis for the acclaimed Spike Lee film (The New York Times).

Rocco Klein, a veteran homicide detective in a New Jersey city just outside Manhattan, has lost his appetite for the wild drama of the street. When a warm June night brings yet another drug murder, Klein has no sense that the case is anything special. A black 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 Klein 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.

At once an explosive murder mystery and a riveting portrait of two lives on a collision course, Clockers is a gritty tale of suspense from the award-winning screenwriter for HBO’s The Wire, a New York Times–bestselling novelist who “gets so deep under the skin of both the cops and the clockers that it’s hard to believe he himself has never been either” (People).

“Page after page explodes with prose as vivid as kinetic art.” —Chicago Tribune

“Powerful . . . Harrowing . . . Remarkable.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Triumphant . . . An astounding accomplishment.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer