So, is this the real New York? Not quite. It’s an invented New York every bit as populous. Price’s ear for dialogue isn’t a reporter’s so much as a screenwriter’s. Too many characters here speak too well, too energetically, too dramatically; what they see from the corners of their eyes is too seldom exactly humdrum. This is that inflated, life-plus-50-per-cent version of realism that at once captures its original and builds on it. There is a difference between galvanic vigour and real, breathing life. You cannot help but suspect that Price can turn this stuff out by the yard; that his ambition in this book is not, perhaps, equal to his powers.

But it’s none of my business to chide him for not writing a different book than the one he has. If anyone else thinks they can write a police procedural this good — this linguistically alive and this tough and this lushly inventive — let them by all means have a go.

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