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Hollowpoint
by Rob Reuland (Reader: David Colacci)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Paperback Nova Audio Books (2002-01-28)
ISBN: 1587884690
EAN: 9781587884696
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Release Date: 2002-01-28
SKU: BASJ058a
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: 3 cassettes in excellent condition, inside original box.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
There was a time when Assistant District Attorney Andrew Giobberti pursued his job with vigor and a certain glee. He sent hundreds of perps upstate and commanded the respect of the tough Brooklyn cops whose investigations he steered. Now he mostly thinks about his next drink and the girl he can persuade to share it with him. A hand has reached into his chest and removed something that made the whole machine run.
She was five years old, and her name was Opal.
Over the course of one impossibly hot August, Gio's life comes apart. It's been a year since his daughter died, but the loss carves away at him still. A case much like others crosses his desk: young girl, dead from a gunshot wound, crackhead mother, very guilty looking boyfriend. Something in this ordinary if tawdry case uncovers a vast well of grief and rage in him, and it's unclear who will be the target of his urge to avenge a pointless death. His steely associate, Stacey - with whom he shares his bed but nothing more - watches with alarm as he lurches toward an act that could prove to be destruction or redemption. He's badly in need of one of them.
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Customer Reviews
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A book about redemption
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-09-17
I picked up this book on tape at the library for a quickie read) to listen to while passing the time doing mundane household chores. What a nice surprise to find this multi-layered novel interwoven with human condition and survival in difficult circumstances. I found the story compelling and the characters flawed and interesting (always a plus). In the end the tale is all about the chance for redemption...of ourselves and others, often occuring at the same moment. I thought it was a bittersweet novel, beautifully written and well worth the time it would take you to read or listen to.
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Doesn't live up to its reputation.
Rating  (3)
Date: 2005-09-11
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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Caveat Emptor
Rating (3)
Date: 2003-11-28
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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Not a cozy Agatha Christie story
Rating  (4)
Date: 2002-11-23
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I highly recommend this novel to those readers like me who are tired of formulaic mysteries with predictable characters and plots. Mr. Rueland's first novel transcends the mystery genre and delivers a powerful story of guilt and forgiveness. Excellent descriptive prose, hard-edged style and terrific dialog carry the story line beyond the normal range of most mystery writers. Not a cozy Agatha Christie story, but a harsh, sobering look at murder and its consequences.
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Hollow
Rating (3)
Date: 2002-09-10
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
"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.
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