Cleveland Blurred

By Emerson Batdorff

There is a trend today into gritty reality in all things, even in books that formerly would have been content to be just thrillers.

There is a big problem in this. The author must indulge in even-handed reality or he makes the whole works incredible to people who are unbelievers in any segment.

In Trial, by William Harrington (McKay; $6.95), which is outstanding for its description of a man urinating into the wind, if Harrington can write

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and, why can't he compose a realistic newspaper headline or phrase a newspaper story that sounds as though it might once have been printed somewhere?

The question is material. If he is so unrealistic in his newspaper doings, which I know about. how can I be sure he's got his facts straight on homosexuality? Homosexuality is even more difficult to get sorted out than newspapers.

Trial, by a Columbus lawyer, is presumably set in Cleveland. There are some familiar place names scattered though it for verisimilitude but it doesn't catch the quiet desperation of the city. That lack exemplifies the novel's main problem. It comes so close and then just misses.

It doesn't quite give a feeling of reality in either its story of a homosexual relationship between two police detectives or in the relationship one of the detectives develops with a girl (he's apparently a switcher) or in a riot that develops in the ghetto.

THE RIOT is particularly intriguing. Clement Yacobucci, the police detective, has resigned from the force after getting a tip that his relationship with the captain was about to be made public.

Yacobucci has a new job as investigator for Ohio's attorney general, a man who wants to be governor. Yacobucci digs up evidence of drug sales in a back alley club in black Cleveland and forces the police to move. There has been premature publication of the plans but the police raid anyway. Yacobucci stands by watching, along with a buddy from the attorney general's office, and they attend interesting events as the ghetto explodes in a riot touched off by the raid.

FATE brings Yacobucci and his buddy to a liquor

store where looters are helping themselves. The police try to stop the looters. They run. The police fire. One of the shots fells a looter. Yacobucci investigates, finds the body is that of a former stoolie of his and turns and screams at the police for their brutality. This is one of the least sensible scenes in any book of recent memory.

Harrington's approach to reality extends largely to telling in detail about what formerly would only have been alluded to. He does no better at characterization or conviction than the hidebound authors used to. It's a thriller largely without thrills because it presumes to be a work of great depth.