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2.0 out of 5 stars
Very Weak, 7 Mar 2005
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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