- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Random House; First Edition and First Printing edition (Jun 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0375505024
- ISBN-13: 978-0375505027
- Product Dimensions: 16 x 2.3 x 24.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,285,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Robert Reuland’s hard-edged yet elegant writing has drawn comparisonsto that of writers as far-flung as Chandler, Hemingway, and T. S. Eliot, but his voice is all his own. With Semiautomatic, Reuland delivers another fist-in-the-gut novel set inside the courtroom and on the darkened street corners of Brooklyn. Drawing on his experience as a homicide prosecutor, Reuland captures lives on the edge, men and women working and dying in a very real world that most of us never see, although it exists right under our noses.
Semiautomatic follows Reuland’s acclaimed debut, Hollowpoint, which introduced antihero Andrew Giobberti, a prosecutor reckoning with his daughter’s accidental death while investigating a murder case that hits far too close to home. Now, eighteen months later, we find Gio gun-shy, living a rote existence, working in the sleepily academic Appeals Bureau. Then an opportunity comes for personal and professional rebirth: a murder trial.
Gio vows to play this one by the book, yet the difficulty of doing that quickly becomes apparent. He is paired with prosecutor Laurel Ashfield, and the two establish an instant mutual dislike. A key witness disappears. The case detective is conspicuously unavailable. The district attorney himself seems to have far more interest in the trial than the mundane facts would seem to merit. And Gio learns that it was not by chance that he was picked for this case.
Gio is swept into the seamy, seedy world of Brooklyn politics and prosecution, caught between decent lives and indecent corruption, between streets that are already too dangerous and a killer who will most certainly kill again. And in a world where right and wrong depend on everything from where you were born to where you were last standing, making the wrong choice may cost one man his career, or another man his life.
Semiautomatic follows Reuland’s acclaimed debut, Hollowpoint, which introduced antihero Andrew Giobberti, a prosecutor reckoning with his daughter’s accidental death while investigating a murder case that hits far too close to home. Now, eighteen months later, we find Gio gun-shy, living a rote existence, working in the sleepily academic Appeals Bureau. Then an opportunity comes for personal and professional rebirth: a murder trial.
Gio vows to play this one by the book, yet the difficulty of doing that quickly becomes apparent. He is paired with prosecutor Laurel Ashfield, and the two establish an instant mutual dislike. A key witness disappears. The case detective is conspicuously unavailable. The district attorney himself seems to have far more interest in the trial than the mundane facts would seem to merit. And Gio learns that it was not by chance that he was picked for this case.
Gio is swept into the seamy, seedy world of Brooklyn politics and prosecution, caught between decent lives and indecent corruption, between streets that are already too dangerous and a killer who will most certainly kill again. And in a world where right and wrong depend on everything from where you were born to where you were last standing, making the wrong choice may cost one man his career, or another man his life.
From the Publisher
A brilliant literary thriller in the style of Scott Turow.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very Weak,
By
This review is from: Semiautomatic (Paperback)
I picked up this short crime novel 'cause I was in a rush and it had a nice blurb on the cover from George Pelecanos (one of my favorite writers). Well, haste definitely made waste for me, and I'm sad to report that Pelecanos gave me a bum steer. This story about a murder trial in Brooklyn is an utterly tepid and uninteresting piece of work. Part of the problem is that a lot of the backstory to the protagonist Giobberti, a 40-year-old homicide prosecutor for the District Attorney's office, resides in Reuland's debut, Hollowpoint. Apparently in that book Giobberti screwed up so badly that he was exiled in disgrace to the backwater of the Appeals Bureau. He also either then or subsequently lost his daughter in a traffic accident and his wife walked out on him. Now, some 18 months later, he is unexpectedly told to take over a routine case involving a teenager who killed a bodega owner in a stickup. Already on the case is inexperienced junior prosecutor Laurel Ashfield, who's never tried a homicide. Most of the book revolves around Giobberti and her getting a feel for each other and the case. Almost immediately, Giobberti (and the reader) realizes there's something not quite right about the case, and it takes an awfully long time for the specifics to be revealed. Once revealed, the specifics end up being woefully uninteresting, revolving around the completely unshocking reality of cops and DAs playing fast and loose with the truth in order to put away bad guys in order to score political points. The theme of corrupt a corrupt legal system and bent cops has been exhaustively explored in film and fiction for over a century, and Reuland brings nothing new to the table here. The author was himself a lawyer for the Brooklyn DA's Homicide Bureau, so the book does benefit from a certain authenticity of detail. Reuland is particularly strong in describing places and creating vivid mental images of the courtroom, apartments, bathrooms, offices, and so on. Unfortunately, the people moving through these spaces don't talk or think the way real people do. The dialogue tends to be so clipped and elliptical that one wonders if the author is trying to parody of pulp films. At one point Giobberti actually addresses Ashfield as "sister" and another character laughably tells Giobberti to "take your meathooks off me!" Worst of all, there's no suspense and no dramatic tension to be found anywhere in this entirely skippable book.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better Than It's Debut in the Series,
By Jeff - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Semiautomatic (Hardcover)
I liked Hollowpoint, but I really like the follow-on, Semiautomatic. If you read one, you must start with the debut novel, as there is a tremendous amount of back story that Reuland does not repeat in sufficient detail in this book.
After Hollowpoint, we saw a down on his luck assistant DA do his best to insert the right outcome into a case he was handling for the prosecutor's office. The author's prior work as a DA there lent a lot of charm to the first book and all of that continues here. As with the first book, the protagonist is handled a 'simple' case that turns out to be anything but. He's pared with a partner who has no experience in prosecuting murder cases, and they develop a very tentative and complex relationship while they try to move forward with the case. As you might expect, there are bigger forces and a larger agenda here at work. Watching them figure this out and what they're prepared to do about it is a real treat. I wrote in my review of Hollowpoint that the sense of place for Brooklyn was strong. It's even stronger here. You can practically smell the steam of the summer shower coming off of the still hot pavements. Reuland is an author to keep an eye on. I for one will be following him. Recommended highly. 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very Weak,
By A. Ross - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Semiautomatic (Hardcover)
I picked up this short crime novel 'cause I was in a rush and it had a nice blurb on the cover from George Pelecanos (one of my favorite writers). Well, haste definitely made waste for me, and I'm sad to report that Pelecanos gave me a bum steer. This story about a murder trial in Brooklyn is an utterly tepid and uninteresting piece of work. Part of the problem is that a lot of the backstory to the protagonist Giobberti, a 40-year-old homicide prosecutor for the District Attorney's office, resides in Reuland's debut, Hollowpoint. Apparently in that book Giobberti screwed up so badly that he was exiled in disgrace to the backwater of the Appeals Bureau. He also either then or subsequently lost his daughter in a traffic accident and his wife walked out on him. Now, some 18 months later, he is unexpectedly told to take over a routine case involving a teenager who killed a bodega owner in a stickup.
Already on the case is inexperienced junior prosecutor Laurel Ashfield, who's never tried a homicide. Most of the book revolves around Giobberti and her getting a feel for each other and the case. Almost immediately, Giobberti (and the reader) realizes there's something not quite right about the case, and it takes an awfully long time for the specifics to be revealed. Once revealed, the specifics end up being woefully uninteresting, revolving around the completely unshocking reality of cops and DAs playing fast and loose with the truth in order to put away bad guys in order to score political points. The theme of corrupt a corrupt legal system and bent cops has been exhaustively explored in film and fiction for over a century, and Reuland brings nothing new to the table here. The author was himself a lawyer for the Brooklyn DA's Homicide Bureau, so the book does benefit from a certain authenticity of detail. Reuland is particularly strong in describing places and creating vivid mental images of the courtroom, apartments, bathrooms, offices, and so on. Unfortunately, the people moving through these spaces don't talk or think the way real people do. The dialogue tends to be so clipped and elliptical that one wonders if the author is trying to parody of pulp films. At one point Giobberti actually addresses Ashfield as "sister" and another character laughably tells Giobberti to "take your meathooks off me!" Worst of all, there's no suspense and no dramatic tension to be found anywhere in this entirely skippable book. 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A legal thriller with character,
By David Montgomery "Book Critic" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Semiautomatic (Hardcover)
Rob Reuland's Semiautomatic is the follow-up to his excellent 2000 debut Hollowpoint. The author has brought back hard-bitten Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Andrew Giobberti for another go-around on the borough's mean streets and in its grim halls of justice.A bodega owner has been murdered in what seems to be an open-and-shut case. As Gio digs deeper, though, he senses that something is rotten underneath the surface. There's a reason he was assigned to this murder and, once he learns it, his outrage leads him to take on his corrupt bosses. There are times when Semiautomatic suffers from an excess of personality, with machinegun sentences and clipped dialogue assaulting readers so fast they hardly have a chance to catch their breath. That is also part of the book's charm, though, as Reuland breaks out of the typical urban crime mold with his fresh, compelling protagonist and idiosyncratic style. Semiautomatic is recommended to anyone who is tired of the usual, run-of-the-mill legal thriller and wants to read something that tells it a little more like it really is. Reviewed by David Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times |
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