Green Sun

Starred review from December 4, 2017
After several years teaching English literature in Idaho, Hanson, the hero of Anderson’s deeply moving novel set in 1983, has returned to police work as a beat cop in the economically devastated neighborhoods of East Oakland, Calif. A former Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam, Hanson expected to die in the war. Now, more than a decade later, he misses the simple purity of conflict. Hanson doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and that freedom has brought him closer to his underserved community. Immediately at odds with the department’s policy of brute containment, he sees himself as more of an “armed social worker.” Things get complicated when Hanson’s path crosses that of Felix Maxwell, the local drug lord who has become a kind of urban folk hero. In a series of vivid and often hallucinatory episodes, Anderson (Night Dogs) shows Hanson, aided by an 11-year-old neighborhood boy named Weegee, navigating the mean streets of Oakland, dealing with situations forcefully but always with humanity. Anderson’s model of community policing couldn’t be more timely.

December 1, 2017

A 38-year-old U.S. Special Forces veteran and former Portland, OR, police officer, Hanson is now a beat cop in 1983 Oakland, patrolling the city's worst areas. He views himself as more of a counselor than an enforcer and would rather talk through a solution than make arrests. Hanson goes into dangerous situations alone rather than requests backup. Disliked by most of his colleagues, he works the night shift solo, gets drunk on tequila at shift's end, and sleeps the day away dreaming of his Vietnam service, death, or his daily beat. His only friend is 12-year-old Weegie, who, without some intervention, will most likely end up selling drugs on street corners. This third Hanson installment (Night Dogs) provides a dull accounting of its protagonist's routine. There is nothing that indicates the story's time period. Readers will neither like nor dislike Hanson; he is tepid, neither rogue cop nor rule follower. Even the violence is subdued. The romance with Weegie's mother is abrupt, and the ending lacks credibility. VERDICT Strictly only for the author's fans. [See Prepub Alert, 8/7/17.]--Edward Goldberg, Syosset P.L., NY

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2017
Hanson, Anderson's endlessly conflicted cop hero, leaves Portland (Night Dogs, 1996) for Oakland. It's a marriage made in hell.It's no surprise that most of his fellow officers take against Hanson, who doesn't so much color outside the lines as operate on a frequency where the lines don't appear. Lt. Garber tries to get him to drop out of the police academy because he's too old, too set in his ways, and too noncompliant. The more practically minded Sgt. Jackson uses him as a crash-test dummy in training exercises. Officers Barnes and Durham use him to set up a suspect they're after in full knowledge that they're setting him up, too. Hanson, who thinks of himself as a social worker with a gun, never fights back, but he often zones out in the manner of a Kurt Vonnegut hero. As the months go by, he befriends Weegee, a street-smart kid; he quietly lusts after Racine, who's called the cops on her abusive live-in; he keeps crossing swords with drug lord Felix Maxwell, though, in the manner of Kabuki warriors, neither of them ever seems to land a blow; he sees a vision of a black rabbit at the Mormon Temple; he responds to any number of complaints by defusing the situation and reporting that there's nothing to report. Nearly half of Hanson's violent, poetically rendered rookie year in Oakland has passed before some, though by no means all, of these plotlines begin to converge, and when they do, it's like watching a finely crafted short story emerge from a novel-length chrysalis.Read Anderson for great scenes and an appealingly contrary hero, and the absence of the traditional kinds of genre coherence, not to mention suspense, won't bother you a bit.

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Kevin Stillwell narrates this gritty collection of interconnected crimes and misdemeanors in East Oakland, California, in 1983, bringing the era to life. Hanson, a Vietnam veteran who is now a police officer, lives and works in this blighted part of the city, where he investigates murders, deaths, domestic squabbles, and drugs. He's known for his common-sense solutions, honesty, and kindness in his interactions with all, including the drug kingpin of the area. Stillwell's soft tones are all Hanson. He portrays the detective's overall calm and methodical demeanor, particularly in his dealings with 13-year-old Weejee and his half-sister, Libya. Throughout all the blood and guts, crimes of passion, and posturing for dominance, Stillwell's voice downplays the violence and racial tensions. M.B.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 1, 2018
Anderson doesn't publish much, but when he does, it's something to remember. This is his third novel about Officer Hanson, whose life pretty much parallels the author's own: a tour in Vietnam (Sympathy for the Devil, 1987), followed by work as a patrol cop with the Portland, Oregon, police department (Night Dogs, 1996), a stint as an English professor, and then a return to policing, this time with the Oakland PD in the crack-ridden 1980s. Anderson picks up the story in Oakland, where Hanson is riding solo through the city's meanest streets, earning grudging respect from the largely African American residents for his refusal to behave like every other cop and alienating his fellow officers for the same reason. The novel's episodic structure follows Hanson on his beat, and in the accretion of incidents, Anderson shows just how hard it is to be a good cop, to put mediation before violence, to solve disputes rather than setting a flame to them. From night to night, four figures keep popping up, like themes in a fugue: a bike-riding teen called Weegee; his aunt, Libya, to whom Hanson is attracted; a drug kingpin who befriends Hanson and tries to hire him; and a black rabbit that may be real and may not. All four come together in a wrenching finale that functions almost cathartically for both Hanson and the reader, a release from the emotional tension that has been building throughout the story. It is perhaps the perfect time for an honest, realistic, unflinching portrayal of a good cop, and Anderson delivers just that.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)