Rating: 
Summary: Can anything grow in Brooklyn?
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Can anything grow in Brooklyn?
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A truly first-rate thriller
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A truly first-rate thriller
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A good sleeping sedative!
Review: Look up "hyperbole" in the Oxford English dictionary and adjacent to it you will find "Hollowpoint". I found Reuland's language pretentious at best, cumbersome at worst. Once i waded through the opening chapters and emerged at the other side, i was a weaker version of my former self. I even got the distinct impression that Reuland himself got fed-up, as soon the language changed to a more familiar one...English! I would give the book 1 star, but its one saving grace was when it ended! Avoid...unless you suffer from insomnia!
Rating: 
Summary: necessitas vincit legem
Review: stream of consciousness style. a deeply personal worldview darkly colored by grief and self-loathing, yet leavened by a humor born of despair. a notable character study of a clinically depressed prosecutor. classy.
Rating:
Summary: Noirish and Lyrical
Review: This first novel has, as they say, style to burn. It's a story of a more or less alcoholic Brooklyn prosecutor who, by the time we meet him, has been 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 don't give away stories in my reviews, but 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.
Rating:
Summary: Brooklyn criminal law with some painful introspection
Review: This is a book that offers a glance into inner-city life of Brooklyn through the eyes of a homicide assistant district attorney named "Gio". Meanwhile, the reader learns of Gio's own dark and sad life. It's a very compelling book, with some brilliant conversation, and, in the end, I dare say you can smell the burning Brooklyn blacktop in the middle of the summer. I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This is a remarkable journey thru Gio's mind as he reconciles the terrible tragedy from his own life with the tragedy he sees every day on the streets of Brooklyn. For those readers who prefer a complicated plot with lots of twists, there might be only disappointment with this novel. But for those who are interested in getting inside the mind of a man who can't quit, can't go on, and can't forgive himself, this is a fantastic read.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: 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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