Helpful Score: 2
Book just too long & "wordy" ! Could have said all the important things in about 450 pages! Had to skim too much......so I really did not enjoy it.
Helpful Score: 2
The book that is the basis for the recent movie.
I found the book a little hard to get into. However, it was a frank look inside racial tensions and prejudices in the midst of a missing child crisis.
I found the book a little hard to get into. However, it was a frank look inside racial tensions and prejudices in the midst of a missing child crisis.
Helpful Score: 2
Entirely too long and drawn out, with entirely too many bit players to keep track of. No discernable protagonists that caught my interest. I skimmed much of this book and I really didn't enjoy what I did read at all.
Helpful Score: 2
This is a gritty, though-provoking suspense novel of the highest caliber. Coming out soon in a movie version that will probably be very good, but couldn't possibly equal the book. Read it first!
Helpful Score: 2
Set in the same blasted New Jersey ghetto as his much-admired Clockers (1992), Price's first novel since that bestseller is less a sequel than a monumental complement played in minor key, a re-visitation by an author who's older, sadder, wiser. The story flows from an event drawn from headlines: Brenda Martin, a white woman, staggers bleeding into a hospital to claim that her car has been hijacked by a black man?with her four-year-old son in the backseat. The jacking allegedly occurred in the park that divides the largely black city of Dempsey from the white-dominated city of Gannon. In response, Gannon cops seal off and invade D-Town, inflaming racial tensions and attracting an army of media. As in Clockers, Price again scans urban life through two protagonists, one black, one white?here, black Dempsey cop Lorenzo Council and white local reporter Jesse Haus. As both draw close to grief-crazed Brenda, one question propels the narrative: Is she telling the truth? The answer and its violent aftermath are equally inevitable, as Price snares the surface and the substance of America caught in a slow-motion riot of racial rage.
Helpful Score: 1
Did not understand well because of the use of slang
Helpful Score: 1
A great read. Great characters and thought provoking plot!
Set in the same blasted New Jersey ghetto as his much-admired Clockers (1992), Price's first novel since that bestseller is less a sequel than a monumental complement played in minor key, a re-visitation by an author who's older, sadder, wiser. The story flows from an event drawn from headlines: Brenda Martin, a white woman, staggers bleeding into a hospital to claim that her car has been hijacked by a black man?with her four-year-old son in the backseat. The jacking allegedly occurred in the park that divides the largely black city of Dempsey from the white-dominated city of Gannon. In response, Gannon cops seal off and invade D-Town, inflaming racial tensions and attracting an army of media. As in Clockers, Price again scans urban life through two protagonists, one black, one white?here, black Dempsey cop Lorenzo Council and white local reporter Jesse Haus. As both draw close to grief-crazed Brenda, one question propels the narrative: Is she telling the truth? The answer and its violent aftermath are equally inevitable, as Price snares the surface and the substance of America caught in a slow-motion riot of racial rage. His language is street-fresh, his dialogue as if eavesdropped; his characters are soulful, flawed, dead real. Price's experience as a screenwriter (The Color of Money, etc.) shows in the predictable dramatic arc of his tale, but the novel is no less powerful for its popular bent. Within its structural confines, the story line veers in unexpected directions, with each detour bringing readers closer to Price's ultimate vision?that our nation's hope lies not in social movements but in the flame of humaneness that flickers in each of us, cop and criminal, black and white.
Excellent writing, a style that makes the reader feel as if he or she is right there on the mean streets of Dempsey, New Jersey. The story is grim, the streets are grim, the nearly hopeless souls that people the story are grim and Price makes no attempt to lighten any of that. A gripping novel in all respects.
Great dialogue.
chilling,full of hairpin turns and unforseeable switchbacks.
A harrowing story of a possibly abducted child. You spend the whole book wondering..............
Awesome book. The movie didn't do it justice. Its a long book but definitely worth it.
If you like crime stories, this is a must read!
Good story; a little slow for my tastes.
The writer, Price, seems to know a lot about the gritty New York urban landscape,including the tension between blacks and whites. A mother, Brenda, ends up in a hospital emergency ward with blood all over her hands. When the lead character, policeman Corleone arrives to question her, she claims her car was stolen and her 4 year old boy was taken with the car since he was sleeping in the back seat. This event ignites racial tensions when the cops where Brenda lives (Brenda & cops are mostly white) go to the projects where the car hijack took place and take over the investigation. Corleone, the protagonist in this story, sees where this will lead but his supervisors want to let it ride, much to their later regret. Jesse, a young reporter, hustles, lies, manipulates, does whatever she can to get close to the investigation and other events happening in the projects. I found her to be the most obnoxious yet nonetheless fascinating character as she pursues different aspects of the story. I suspect most readers will guess who the kidnapper/hijacker is about midway through the book. Yet there are some surprises also surrounding this crime. Not exactly a mystery, Freedomland is well worth reading for it's insight into inner city dynamics and the people who live there.
It's been awhile since I read this but from what I recall, it was a good story though slightly long winded in some areas. Given headlines in recent years when I read this I almost thought it was a true story.
A white woman, her hands gashed and bloody, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man. But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat and he has now disappeared into the night...
Wow! The was the first book by Price I've read, but definately not my last. Engaging and very real.
GOOD DETECTIVE NOVEL
A tale of a police investegation. This novel is based on a true event...where a woman drove her kids into a lake and reported them kidnapped. A modern"American Tragedy"....Powerful!
Novel of the movie of same name.
