Synopsis
On an urban battleground dangerously divided along racial lines, probation officer Steve Baum is desperately struggling to hold on to the last remaining shreds of his idealism—until Darryl King invades his world. A deranged young sociopath, one of the most bloodthirsty creations of a diseased society, Darryl has come to drag Baum along with him into an inescapable morass of terror and corruption. And as their ravaged city explodes, they will stand face-to-face—mortal enemies trapped together in the heart of a devastating inferno that threatens to consume them both.
Publishers Weekly
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. (May)