Forever tattooed by his hardscrabble upbringing in a Bronx housing project, author and screenwriter Richard Price (The Wanderers) continues to circle back to scenes of violence, broken homes, racial disharmony, and urban decay, yet his profound empathy and richly drawn characters skirt lazy stereotypes. Like 1992's Clockers and 1999's Freedomland, Price's superb new novel Samaritan takes place in the vivid fictionalized New Jersey city of Dempsy, a burned-out industrial wasteland that's like a seething repository of crumbled dreams. Price's books always contain at least a vague hint of autobiography, and it's easy to see the connection between him and his tortured hero Ray Mitchell; both are former addicts who gave up lucrative sojourns as Hollywood writers in order to return to their humble roots. But where reconnecting with old acquaintances and new victims in his former turf may seem charitable, Mitchell pays dearly for his self-serving generosity. In a twist on the title, no good deed goes unpunished in Samaritan, a lesson that Mitchell refuses to take to heart even when a vase is smashed over his head, leaving him bloodied and near-dead. His refusal to give up the perpetrator's name, no matter how much danger that could bring him or his family, adds a lingering "whodunit" element to the book, though the obligatory plot manipulations are neither Price's strong suit nor his focal point. Once again bringing unsettling racial divisions to the fore, Price volleys between the white Mitchell and black detective Nerese Ammons, a childhood friend who takes a fiercely personal interest in solving a case that normal procedure would bury. The daring, ingenious two-pronged structure advances on timelines separated by a month: one tracking the events leading up to the assault, the other following Ammons' investigation a month later. Upon giving up a $4,000-a-week job writing for a (lousy) Emmy-nominated TV show called Brokedown High, Mitchell heads back East to Dempsy, planning on "giving back" to the community and being a real father to his teenage daughter Ruby. A former teacher, Mitchell returns to his former high school and teaches creative writing once a week to a handful of mostly sub-literate freshmen, whom he tries to lure with sordid stories and awkward street lingo, a form of condescension that Price nails with delicious precision. When Mitchell gets clocked with the vase, Ammons finds a number of possible culprits, many related to Mitchell's new girlfriend Danielle, who surrounds herself with dangerous characters, particularly her jailbird husband, a local druglord. Their relationship grew out of Mitchell's offer to pay for her brother's funeral, a gesture that turns out to be his most selfish selfless act. By chasing one timeline with another, Price risks halting the narrative momentum, but he achieves just the opposite, creating a seamless back-and-forth of information and psychological detail that deepens the book as it progresses, with a climax that ties the two storylines together effortlessly. Samaritan could be labeled a crime thriller, a police procedural, a social exposé, or a character piece, but Price holds these elements in such skillful balance that the book is really all of the above. Mitchell may be Price's worst vision of himself, but the author's generosity and truth about the urban poor is far from self-serving. He converts ravaged locations into something more complex than a dull blight on the cityscape.