To give and receive, strings attached

In his novels “Clockers” and “Freedomland,” Richard Price displayed an exact and intimate knowledge of drug dealing and racial conflict in the generic urban wasteland he called Dempsy, N.J. He couldn’t have gained that knowledge without spending time in the streets and housing projects and talking to a lot of poor people and criminals. Probably some were flattered by Price’s attention and frustrated when he stopped talking to them. Possibly some felt that they, not just their stories, had been used.

Price’s new novel, “Samaritan,” explores the sources and consequences of this kind of resentment. He creates an alter ego, Ray Mitchell, who grew up in Dempsy and, after achieving success as a TV writer in Hollywood, returns home. Ray wants to “give back” to the community and reconnect with his 13-year-old daughter, Ruby, who has lived in New York with her mother since a four-year cocaine binge by Ray broke up the marriage.

The same manic neediness that characterized Ray’s life as a drug addict carries over into his life as a volunteer teacher of creative writing at the inner-city high school he once attended. He’s desperate to be loved, requiring regular fixes of gratitude. As his ex-wife says, “Ray likes to save people, you know, sweep them off their feet with his generosity. It’s a cheap high if you’ve got the money, but basically it’s all about him.”

Thanks to Hollywood, Ray has the money. He gives an ex-classmate, Carla Powell, $3,200 for the funeral of her son, dead of an overdose, and has an affair with Carla’s daughter, Danielle, whose drug-dealer husband, Freddy Martinez, is in jail. He gives a former student, Salim El-Amin, $7,300 to launch a T-shirt business and considers cosigning a loan for a reformed junkie to finance a cafe and drop-in center for teenagers.

News of Ray’s largess spreads like blood through water, drawing an assortment of sharks. As “Samaritan” opens, Ray has had his head bashed in by someone who entered his apartment in a luxurious enclave next to Dempsy. Ray survives, with nerve damage and a hole in his skull, but he refuses to tell police who did it.

Det. Nerese “Tweetie” Ammons takes the case as a personal challenge. She remembers Ray’s kindness to her after a childhood accident. Fortyish, overweight, on the verge of retirement, she pursues an investigation other cops would abandon because of Ray’s stubborn silence. Like Ray, Nerese is determined to do the right thing, but unlike him, she has discipline and self-control.

Methodically, she interviews witnesses and suspects, including the most obvious, the cuckolded Freddy and the unstable Salim. Meanwhile, Price follows Ray through the days leading up to the assault. Like George V. Higgins, Price, seemingly possessed with a tape-recorder ear, is one of our masters of dialogue. And like Higgins’ novels, “Samaritan” leans on this strength a bit too hard. It’s talky, crammed with smaller stories: the testimony Nerise elicits, the yarns Ray spins to ingratiate himself, the tales his students write.

Price’s exposition, in contrast, is detail-rich but clunky and hurried, as if he can hardly wait for his characters to open their mouths again. As a mystery, “Samaritan” works well, but the mystery ought to be secondary to the social novel and the novel of character, given Price’s deep knowledge of these people. The social novel suffers because it’s Ray’s personal quirks, not the neighborhood’s ills, that drive the plot. The novel of character suffers from an inconclusive ending -- has Ray learned his lesson or not? -- and from Ray’s weaknesses being underlined too heavily from the beginning. He would reveal himself anyway, this endearing, embarrassing patsy, doling out brief bursts of attention such as the kids, especially, have never experienced before -- gifts as dangerous, to them and to himself, as so many bombs.