Customer Reviews

Hollowpoint: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If you're a fan of the lee Child school of hard bitten crime fiction, back away slowly from the books of Rob Reuland and go peaceably on your way. However, if you're looking for a well-crafted tale with a lot of nuance and irony wrapped around a gripping story, then climb aboard. You're going to like where this subway train is taking you.

The book revolves around an assistant DA in Brooklyn who is trying to rebuild his personal life after the loss of his young daughter. He's handed a case involving the death by shooting of another young girl. It looks like an easy case, but then...

...but then life and the supposedly simple case get very complicated. Reuland has worked as a DA, and he does defense work now. As a result, he brings a strong sense of what the job is like to this tale, as well as a very strong sense of place about Brooklyn. I can't say more about where the plot goes without dropping a major spoiler into this review. Suffice to say that there's a surprisingly complex finish and that there is some satisfaction for the young DA at the end, but only some. Hollowpoint sets up the follow on book, Semiautomatic very well.

As I think of someone to compare Reuland to, the best I can come up with is another great writer, Megan Abbott. Both are well educated, have a sophisticated prose and plot style, and are more than capable of copping an attitude and writing a book that is very hard to put down.

Recommended strongly.

Brooklyn Assistant D.A. Andy "Gio" Giobberti is not a very attractive guy. He's a self-pitying womanizer who drinks too much and has little but contempt for his job, his colleagues, even himself. He wasn't always like that. But when his carelessness caused the death of his five-year-old daughter, life, and everything else, lost most of its meaning for him.

Gio's latest case is the apparent homicide of a young African American girl who was shot point-blank while lying in her bed at home. The obvious suspect is drug dealer "LL" who was seen fleeing the scene. Gio is ready to put him away, despite the lack of motive or any solid evidence. His own feelings of guilt have more to do with that than the merits of the case.

Readers looking for "the next John Grisham" will probably be disappointed by Reuland's book. It's not a legal thriller at all. But if you're interested in a touching story of a man's pain and self-destruction, you should find a lot to appreciate in "Hollowpoint."

The story begins well, but falls down in the later chapters. I did finish reading the book however. Often times I refuse to do so.

If the left scale is the lighter side of crime fiction (Leonard, Hiaasen, Shames) and the right is darker (Lehane, TJ Parker, Pelecanos), Rob Reuland is on the right edge. It's not a lot of violence that puts him there but the bleak, decadent, self-pitying nature of his leading man, Brooklyn Asst. D.A. Andrew (Gio pronounced "Joe") Giobberti.

Fourteen-year-old Kayla Harris is shot with a hollowpoint bullet, Giobberti has the case and the obvious suspect Lamar Lamb ("LL") may not be the guy. Gio is either too hardened or too ambivalent to believe in LL's innocence. His assistant Stacey Sharpe is one year out of law school, throws off some Ally McBeal mannerisms but will never shake her working class roots, and is more concerned with getting at the truth than Gio is.

This book is not about the case but the characters. At 38 Gio is both a little too old for the life he lives and at the same time too young to have given up as he has. After the death of his five-year-old daughter a year earlier, Gio has been hopping in and out of bars and beds in a Brooklyn sketched in black and white. Stacey, whether it's because her father committed suicide when she was seventeen or something else, seems ready and willing to jump in the sack with whomever. Gio is a convenient if not compatible partner.

When Reuland tells the story in language taken from the Brooklyn surroundings, it works well. All too often, however, he brushes in words that are too flowery for the scene or has Giobberti talk about golf or make an improbable literary reference, and it loses somethng. Two morality plays toward the end weigh heavy, particularly using Kayla's half-sister Utopia as the voice for one, waxing in a sixteen-year-old's voice of the 'hood, which just doesn't ring true.

Toward the end I decided I would let my final rating ride on the last chapter which, unfortunately, I thought was overwritten and overreaching, again taking characters out of the roles they had played to deliver a message that was more than the story needed. So I gave it 3 stars not 4, but I wanted to like it more.

If the left scale is the lighter side of crime fiction (Leonard, Hiaasen, Shames) and the right is darker (Lehane, TJ Parker, Pelecanos), Rob Reuland is on the right edge. It's not a lot of violence that puts him there but the bleak, decadent, self-pitying nature of his leading man, Brooklyn Asst. D.A. Andrew (Gio pronounced "Joe") Giobberti.

Fourteen-year-old Kayla Harris is shot with a hollowpoint bullet, Giobberti has the case and the obvious suspect Lamar Lamb ("LL") may not be the guy. Gio is either too hardened or too ambivalent to believe in LL's innocence. His assistant Stacey Sharpe is one year out of law school, throws off some Allie McBeal mannerisms but will never shake her working class roots, and is more concerned with getting at the truth than Gio is.

This book is not about the case but the characters. At 38 Gio is both a little too old for the life he lives and at the same time too young to have given up as he has. After the death of his five-year-old daughter a year earlier, Gio has been hopping in and out of bars and beds in a Brooklyn sketched in black and white. Stacey, whether it's because her father committed suicide when she was seventeen or something else, seems ready and willing to jump in the sack with whomever. Gio is a convenient if not compatible partner.

When Reuland tells the story in language taken from the Brooklyn surroundings, it works well. All too often, however, he brushes in words that are too flowery for the scene or has Giobberti talk about golf or make an improbable literary reference, and it loses somethng. Two morality plays toward the end weigh heavy, particularly using Kayla's half-sister Utopia as the voice for one, waxing in a sixteen-year-old's voice of the 'hood, which just doesn't ring true.

Toward the end I decided I would let my final rating ride on the last chapter which, unfortunately, I thought was overwritten and overreaching, again taking characters out of the roles they had played to deliver a message that was more than the story needed. So I gave it 3 stars not 4, but I wanted to like it more.

"Hollowpoint" puts an emotionally scarred Homicide ADA into a bleak case. Andrew "Gio" Gioberti is still recovering from the freak death of his daughter. In the wake of the car accident that took his daughter's life (he was the driver) Gio loses his wife, much of his financial security and begins losing both his legal expertise and his sanity. We learn that Gio fatally botched his first homicide case on returning from condolence leave - allowing a murder suspect to testify in grand jury before waiving his immunity (without that waiver, the perp's testimony immunizes him from prosecution). Gio is now an alcoholic who uses and discards attractive female ADA's who, as a group, remain endlessly clueless to his exploitation of them. When the story opens, Gio is investigating the homicide of a 14 year old girl, a single mother living with her sister and her crack-addicted mother. The obvious culprit is Lamar Lamb, a small-time dealer who is already in custody in Brooklyn's notorious 75th precinct (the largest in NYC, and located in an area where even Beirut-born cab drivers fear to go.) Nobody saw Lamb commit the act, only leave the apartment when the gun went off. It's as good a case as anybody can expect without looking too deeply (but Lamb's own lawyer predicts a short trial and a long sentence). On Lamb's side is Gio's shattered soul. Everybody else - from the arresting detective to the victim's sister - point the finger at Lamb, but hint at her drug-ridden mother as the true culprit. The stage is set for a legal batle...

...that never happens. "Hollowpoint" is pretty hollow itself, centered around linking the murder Gio investigates at the outset, the case he botched in Grand Jury and the death of his daughter into a loose-fitting continuity that doesn't really hold. To jazz things up, the author creates a hellish setting - of an aging and cockroach infested ruin in which the DA's office is housed, of detectives whose language is confined to 4-letter words, of menacing judges and lazy defense attorneys. Gio also has a girlfriend, a newer ADA who's become wise to his womanizing, yet can't keep away from him. Her sole mission - remind Gio what a jerk he is. The author needs these effects to shore up a conspicuous lack of legal suspense - nothing goes to trial here, or even gets past the grand jury - and Gio spends less time being a lawyer than a man in serious need of one. The legal details are pretty slim, deceptively camouflaged behind the daily mechanics of being an ADA - like getting your grand jury minutes to Supreme Court before some impatient judge decides to dismiss your indictment for laughs, or saying the words "the people are ready for trial" whenever you step inside of a courtroom. The author also plumps up the story with expansive but empty dialog ("Oh," is a frequent example; also, many characters respond to statements by rephrasing what they've just heard as a question). Most annoying is the use of flashback - compulsively flitting between past and present and throwing in the possible future (as when Gio contemplates the apartment of a female ADA he's thinking of sleeping with). The end ties together the loose threads that don't really go anywhere. In the end, it's all pretty much hollow.

To simply call Rob Reuland's HOLLOWPOINT a crime novel would be unfair. Yes, there is a crime, but this outstanding first novel is more of a character driven morality play.
Andrew Giobberti is a young, Brooklyn ADA, who works one of the toughest neighborhoods in the borough, East New York. Mired in regret and self-pity after his young daughter's death and abandoned by his wife, Gio's life is a wasteland of drinking and meaningless sex, until he is assigned a case involving the death of a fourteen year old girl.
Both sarcastic wit and blunt reality drive HOLLOWPOINT in an examination of the fine lines which blur and separate the innocent from the guilty, and where even the morality of those who uphold the law is in question.
HOLLOWPOINT is one of the finest novels I've read this year, and the very talented Rob Reuland is definitely worth watching.