The characters in Richard Price's The Wanderers, male teenagers residing in a project in the Bronx, are horrible. Their days are filled with sex and violence. Life itself has no meaning. Their language is obscene. The only thing important thing to them is their gang. It's as if the cast in Lord of the Flies had been coarsened up and dropped onto the streets of New York in the 1960s. I couldn't put it down.
Writing comment: to me, the best writing lies in its detail. "He stood there looking at her, intoxicated by her Juicy Fruit breath." (page 83) That one sentence, at least IMHO, reveals so much about the two characters.
