Cracker Bling

January 19, 2009
Shortly after Judson Two-Bears Hootier Jr. is released from Rikers Island, 19-year-old Hootie finds his desire to stay on the straight-and-narrow severely tested in this middling crime thriller set in New York City from Solomita (Monkey in the Middle
). After accepting a toke from a large, forbidding white man in a Harlem subway station, Hootie is shocked to see his new “friend” fire a number of pistol rounds at a rat on the platform. Later, the ex-con is even more shaken to learn that the man's target practice coincided with the murder of drug dealer Flaco Almeda. Hootie's proximity to the slaying places him in the crosshairs of NYPD Det. Peter Chigorin (aka the Russian), who squeezes him for information on his recent acquaintance. The writing can be awkward at times (“Borne by events as unpredictable as they are malevolent, disaster comes to the black man as a random act”), and the odd-couple partnership of Hootie and the Russian is less than compelling.

January 15, 2009
Solomita (Monkey in the Middle, 2008, etc.) reexamines the shibboleth having to do with crime and the lack of payment thereof.

Nineteen-year-old Judson Hootier, known as Hootie on Harlem 's mean streets, is a soul in torment. His mom 's black; his dad was a full-blooded Crow Indian; and the resulting identity crisis gives him no peace. Currently on probation after nine miserable months on Rikers Island for small-time burglary, he 's homeless, purposeless and hopeless. Then he meets redoubtable Bubba Yablonsky and his enticing female partner Amelia Cincone. Bubba and Amelia are crooks with a vision. To them, poverty irks most because it deprives its victims of the respect only money can buy. While this sort of respect doesn 't come easily to people in their socioeconomic bracket, it 's by no means out of reach. As Bubba puts it, "Every great fortune begins with a crime. " Hootie is more than ready to join in this chorus, despite occasional misgiving along the way. These multiply exponentially when he learns the details of the crime Bubba has in mind, even though Hootie agrees that big payoffs seldom come to the risk-averse. When this particular bonanza arrives, it 's a shock to all concerned.

The writing, the plotting and a cast of fully fleshed characters make this a nice, shivery walk on the dark side.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2009
Nineteen-year-old Judson Two-Bears Hootie Hootier has just been released from prison and is determined to go straight. Then, waiting for a subway train, he meets Bubba Yablonsky, a giant of a man who proceeds to shoot a rat right in front of Hootie and the other passengers. Hootie soon learns that Bubba was a star basketball player until he was convicted of killing one of his teammates. Meanwhile, NYPD cop Peter Chigorin is assigned to investigate a brutal gangland-style execution that coincidentally occurred just a few blocks from the subway platform where Bubba shot the rat. Unaware of the investigation, Hootie is enjoying Bubbas luxurious apartment and trying to figure out Bubbas slightly weird girlfriend, Amelia. What Hootie doesnt know is that he will soon be drawn into a dark vortex of danger, violence, and death. Solomita gets this tense, gritty cops-and-robbers drama just right. For aficionados of classic noir, theres violence, blood, guns, drugs, a disturbing portrayal of New Yorks seedy underbelly, and, of course, that overwhelming sense of impending doom.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)