Ruth Rendell sometimes wrote under the nom de plume of Barbara Vine. Ian Rankin has been published under the name of Sam Bourne and Eric Blair decided to become George Orwell. There is a long history of authors of all genres using different or multiple identities, including, perhaps most famously, Mary Ann Evans, who was better known by her pen name George Eliot.

Now Richard Price, the acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter who has been writing for more than four decades, has published his first crime fiction novel under the name of Harry Brandt.

And while Price may be well known and respected for gritty urban noir novels such as The Wanderers, Clockers and Lush Life, there is every chance the pseudonymous Brandt may enjoy even more fame than his creator.

Put simply, Brandt's debut police novel, The Whites, is a cracker; the work of a serious writer clearly revelling in the chance to cover different themes.

This may be more commercial, less literary, than anything Price has done before, but is also more accessible and more likely to sell to the masses. But is nonetheless worthy for that.

Our main protagonist is Billy Graves, a New York City police detective; a decent family man who does his job to the best of his ability.

But Graves was once one of the Wild Geese, a tight-knit group of gung-ho cops who were given free rein in one of the toughest precincts in the Big Apple. Back in the day, Billy made headlines by accidentally shooting a 10-year-old boy while grappling with a criminal who was high as a kite on angel dust.

These maverick Wild Geese, vigilantes with a cause, looked after those who needed their protection and haunted others less deserving.

But five years on the Wild Geese have flown in many different directions. Billy is the only one left in the force. "Of the original seven one had moved to Arizona after retirement, and one had died from a three-pack-a-day habit, leaving a hard-core five."

Then a random murder in busy Penn Station in broad daylight forces Billy, the youngest of the group, to get back together with his remaining old cronies and to confront a past he would rather forget.

Old friends, now very different people from who they used to be, find their close ties fracturing as self-interest comes to the fore and old wounds are reopened. It is fact-paced, compelling stuff.

All five surviving Wild Geese are haunted by crimes they failed to solve; perps they failed to put away. They call them "Whites" – like Herman Melville's great white whale.

"No one asked for these crimes to set up house in their lives, no one asked for these murderers to constantly and arbitrarily lay siege to their psyches like bouts of malaria, no one asked to feel so helplessly in the grip of this nonstop black study that they had no choice but to pursue and pursue."

It is almost impossible not to become enthralled by the tangled lives of these former compadres, all now so different, but sharing the same memories and fears.

Those who loved the late lamented TV series The Wire will note that Phil Spector-lookalike Price was once one of scriptwriters for the early episodes. There is a similar razor-sharp edge to his prose here as there was in the dialogue of that series.

Price also created the acclaimed US series Criminal Justice. Just as in those shows, the characters here are flawed and believable. This is crime fiction at its very best.