Slow Motion Riot

An idealistic probation officer in crime-ridden, racially divided Manhattan struggles to reform a murderous drug addict who aspires to run his own crack organization at the pinnacle of Harlem's underworld

Blauner, an editor at New York magazine, comes achingly close to pulling off a gripping first novel. The two protagonists--young probation officer Steve Baum, fighting (sometimes successfully) New York City's bureaucracy on behalf of his clients, and 18-year-old crackhead Darryl King, a compassionless drug dealer--are on a collision course. Baum struggles with his Auschwitz survivor father (who disapproves of Baum's job and hoards food), his new girlfriend (half-white, half-black, dauntingly upper-middle-class) and the numbing justice system. King struggles with his mother (an ex-heroin addict), drug-world rivals, his probation for car theft and the possible revelation of a murder he's committed. New York seems almost totally bleak, its underclass wretchedness horrifying Baum but barely fazing King. The final confrontation, with Baum held hostage in a housing project, ends explosively. Despite vivid glimpses of the city in extremis and some ironic moments (King's mother says modern drug users "have it too easy"), the novel's effect is undermined by Baum's whining and off-putting first-person, present-tense narration.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A young probation officer finds his shining ideals tarnished by a psychotic felon--in an unwieldy but joltingly urban- authentic crime thriller awash in liberal sentiment. Blauner is a contributing editor for New York magazine covering crime and politics, and that experience surfaces brightly in his pages' trim prose and street savvy, as does the half year he reportedly spent at the New York Dept. of Probation researching this first novel. His hero is probation officer Steven Baum, closing in on 30 but, unlike his colleagues, not yet burned out by the pathetic cast of malefactors tramping into his office each day. In the first person, Baum tells of his staggering caseload, his daily routine, his dumpy apartment, his Sixties-ish ideals, his appointment to a field position that means carrying a gun, his strained relationship with his racist and bitter Holocaust-survivor dad, his checkered love life, etc.: it's another moderately interesting tale of modern city woe, rather slow and self-indulgent. More gripping are the intercut third-person chapters: the pleasingly ironic, though nearly plot- extraneous, attempt by a corrupt municipal powerbroker to get back in the game after serving time; and, central to the plot, the scary antics--mayhem, robbery, murder--of Baum's new charge, young crack-addict/dealer Darryl King. It's King who smashes Baum's ideals as the sociopath not only mocks Baum's heartfelt help, but answers it with escalating violence that explodes in a shootout that leaves several cops dead. In a theatrical, extended conclusion, King, who's become an outlaw hero to the city's blacks, takes Baum hostage; the probation officer finds himself returning King's hate with hate--he's become his father at last. Richly observed characters and the seething lifeblood of the city glisten through the story's heavy moral glaze. A flawed but powerful debut, then, from a writer to watch. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Baum, a probation officer for New York City, is beginning to drink too much and burn out on the job. When Darryl King, a new client who is also a crackhead, drug dealer, and psychopathic killer, violates his parole, he and Baum get caught up in events which sweep them into a tidal wave of hatred, racial prejudice, and tragedy. Switching between sordid misadventures told by Baum and a third-person storyteller relating King's, New York magazine contributing editor for crime and politics Blauner shows the vile life of the drug user, the illusory world of easy money associated with crack, and the self-deception of all working within the criminal justice system. As a first effort, this is gripping and powerful stuff, definitely not for the faint of heart. Vivid characters, plausible events, and scenes rich in human pathos make it an outstanding first novel.
- Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights- University Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.