Clarence Cooper, Jr.

The Scene

The New York Herald Tribune said in 1960 of The Scene: "Not even Nelson Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm burns with the ferocious intensity you'll find here." This explosive novel is a gripping work of heightened, hellish realism about the urban half world of drug pushers and users and narcotics detectives-a harrowing masterpiece.

Born in Detroit in 1934, Clarence Cooper, Jr. spent a life punctuated by incarceration and dogged by addiction. He published five novels in addition to The Scene, including Weed (1963) and The Farm (1968). He died penniless and alone in New York City in 1978.