The Whites Book Summary

In 'The Whites,' we follow the tense lives of a group of New York City detectives haunted by their pasts and the unresolved cases that linger like shadows. Each cop grapples with personal demons and moral dilemmas, leading to a gripping exploration of justice and obsession. When a vengeful figure from their past reemerges, the detectives must confront not only the criminal threat but also their own fractured psyches. Richard Price weaves a masterful narrative filled with authentic dialogue and rich character development. Will they find redemption, or will their ghosts consume them?

By Richard Price, Harry Brandt

Published: 2016

"In the end, it's the choices we make in the darkest moments that define who we really are."

Book Review of The Whites

By the co-writer of the HBO miniseries The Night Of “A masterpiece, to stand with such earlier Price classics as Clockers and Lush Life . . . [The Whites has] a compelling plot, yet the real joy of the book lies page by page, line by line, in its brilliant characterizations, rich detail, endless surprises, crackling dialogue, [and] absurdist humor.” —The Washington Post Back in the 1990s, when Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a ten-year-old boy while stopping an angel-dusted berserker in the street. Branded as a cowboy, Billy spent years in one dead-end posting after another. Now in his early forties, he is a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch, a team of detectives that responds to all felonies from Wall Street to Harlem between one a.m. and eight a.m. Billy’s work is mostly routine, but when Night Watch is called to the four a.m. fatal slashing of a man in Penn Station, his investigation moves beyond the usual handoff to the day shift. And when he discovers that the victim was once a suspect in an unsolved murder—a brutal case with connections to the former members of the Wild Geese—the bad old days are back in Billy’s life with a vengeance.

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In the end, it's the choices we make in the darkest moments that define who we really are.

The Whites

By Richard Price, Harry Brandt