Hollowpoint: A Novel [Paperback]

Robert Reuland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 2002

Brooklyn prosecutor Andrew Giobberti can still remember himself as a father, as a husband, and as the chief of the Homicide Bureau, working out of a hard city’s hardest precincts. That was before a car accident took his daughter but left him untouched—except where it matters. That was before his wife walked out. That was before he became mired in blame and regret that for a year has emptied his life of all meaning and purpose. Everyone wrote him off as too far gone for saving.

Then a case crosses Gio’s desk—the murder of a young girl—that may change everything.

Over one impossibly hot August, Gio confronts the fine line that separates the guilty from the innocent, the killers from those who put them away. And as he seeks the girl’s killer, the truth he uncovers may be the final hit. Or it may give him back his life.
With graphic intensity and mordant wit, Hollowpoint captures the stark urgency of lives on the edge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First-time novelist Reuland walks a fine line in this bold, blackly comedic thriller, painting a gritty, poetic picture of ghetto life yet indulging his self-involved hero and stumbling over details at crucial junctures. Andrew "Gio" Giobberti, a young Brooklyn assistant district attorney, is haunted by his role in his five-year-old daughter's death a year before; he failed to fasten her seat belt, and she was killed in a minor car accident. Abandoned by his wife, Gio wanders through drunken one-night stands and days filled with the routine prosecution of killers, rapists and narcotics dealers. But when the case of Kayla Harris--a 14-year-old shot point-blank in her bed--comes along, Gio can't help drawing personal parallels. While he prefers to see drug dealer Lamar "LL" Lamb as the murderer, the evidence pushes him to investigate Kayla's junkie mother, Nicole Carbon, as the accidental killer of her own daughter. Reuland takes chances in depicting the chauvinistic habits of his protagonist, who abandons one of his many office conquests in a bar after a tryst in the bathroom, and is permanently sunk in a self-pitying haze. Still, his irreverent take on antihero Gio is a refreshing dash of candor in the genre, granting credibility to a story whose racing pace has an addictive effect. Reuland--himself a Brooklyn ADA--describes the Brooklyn Cypress Hills projects in convincing detail, and he captures the dialogue of its crack-addicted dwellers with a sharp and sympathetic ear. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Brooklyn and all the sights, sounds, smells, and anomie that the storied borough encompasses set the stage for this debut effort. The novel's opening finds Andrew Giobberti returning to work after a leave of absence to mourn the death of his five-year-old daughter, Opal. Yet it is not until "Gio" is assigned to prosecute the case of a teenaged girl killed in a Brooklyn housing project that he is finally forced to confront the tragedy that shattered his own life. Along the way, we meet a routine cast of characters: burnt-out cops, slimy criminals, and a truckload of possible love interests. Still, Reuland (himself a D.A.) has avoided writing a mere legal thriller and has instead fashioned a touching and finely written tale of one man's redemption. And while he does possess a sharp eye for the details and nuances of the legal system, he is more concerned with dramatizing the ambiguity between right and wrong and the eternal search for forgiveness in spite of human error. Recommended for all public libraries.
-DHeath Madom, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (March 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037575864X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375758645
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,189,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT REULAND is a criminal attorney in Brooklyn specializing in homicide defense. For many years he served as a senior assistant district attorney in the Homicide Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. A graduate of Cambridge University and the Vanderbilt University School of Law, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Christine, and their two children.

He is the author of three crime novels set in Brooklyn:

Hollowpoint
Semiautomatic
Represent

Rob recently published The Convict Maiden, an historical novel set in Australia in the 1820s.

Connect with Rob at:

[e-mail]
www.robreuland.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Caveat Emptor, November 28, 2003

By 

Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hollowpoint: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a well-written novel about crime, but not a novel that meets the expectations of those seeking 'crime fiction.' This is art fiction, short on incident, long on characterization. While it held my attention it was not in any way suspenseful. Nor was it comic. Something bad has happened to a good man. We eventually learn the mundane but still shattering details. In the meantime he is working on another case which ultimately elucidates his own situation. That's about it, along with some reflections on Brooklyn which are nicely done. This is not, however, a heavily textured reflection on place of the sort associated with a master like James Lee Burke. While the Brooklyn portrayed is darker than Jonathan Lethem's it is not so fully realized as to be a central presence in its own right. My guess is that readers of art fiction are generally not readers of crime fiction and the former may have taken this novel to be the sort of thing read by the latter. It isn't, but it's well done.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly first-rate thriller, April 7, 2001

By 

Falco Gingrich - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollowpoint: A Novel (Hardcover)

In "Hollowpoint" author Rob Reuland has put together one of the best thrillers I've read in recent memory. Part of his secret is his depiction of his anti-hero, Andrew "Gio" Giobberti, a thoroughly un-likable, and yet kind of likable, assistant DA in Brooklyn. Gio has been on a downward slide since an act of negligence led to the accidental death of his daughter. But now he feels the opportunity for some renewal when he begins prosecution in the case of Kayla Harris, a 14-year-old girl killed in one of Brooklyn's tougher neighborhoods.

All of that sounds pretty standard, but what sets Reuland's novel apart is his gritty and wonderful depictions of Brooklyn neighborhoods and characters, Gio's loathsome and pitiable personal life, and the generally haggard life in one of the nations most grueling DA offices. Fans of cookie-cutter thrillers who like to devour their novels in the span of a two-hour plane trip might want to pass this one by - it has too much good writing, too many intriguing characters, and too many plot developments not visible from a hundred miles away. However, "Hollowpoint" is a truly engaging and well-written novel that is sure to please those readers who wish that most thrillers could be something more than they are.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Noirish and Lyrical, April 9, 2001

By 

Stephen McLeod (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hollowpoint: A Novel (Hardcover)

This first novel has style to burn. It's a story of a more or less alcoholic Brooklyn prosecutor hardened by regrettable circumstances in his personal and professional life. Brooklyn is a haunted and haunting setting. The D.A.'s office is realistic (it's the old office actually; the present KCDA now has much nicer digs), as is the dusty, old, sad routine of the criminal courts. The first-person narrative is handled deftly with a kind of parenthetical stream-of-concsiousness technique that shows how even first-person narrators can lie to themselves. I seldom give away stories in my reviews and I'll not break that rule here. Suffice it to say that, even though this story has been told before, it's well-told here, and provides the occasion for the arrival of a welcome new voice. This novel is a good example of the unique capacity of genre-fiction as a formal ground for the display of remarkable talent.