TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 8/06/97: Smell: The Secret Seducer Piet Vroon Nonfiction 8/05/97: The Death and Life of Bobby Z Don Winslow Fiction 8/04/97: Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder Melanie Thernstrom Fiction 8/01/97: Soul Kiss By Shay Youngblood Fiction 7/31/97: I Know You Really Love Me: A Psychiatrist's Journal of Erotomania, Stalking, and Obsessive Love By Doreen Orion Nonfiction 7/30/97: The Wishbones By Tom Perrotta Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: Wasted Youth Novels By Andrew Hultkrans Three new novels take you to the throbbing pulse of decadent youth culture -- yawn. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

________________________ blind pursuit - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _________BY MATTHEW F. JONES ________ FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX | 244 PAGES | FICTION BY GARY KRIST | Some books should carry warning labels on the cover. An appropriate caution for "Blind Pursuit," Matthew F. Jones' intense but flawed fourth novel, might read: "Parents Beware: Do not read this book unless it's 10 o'clock and you know exactly where your children are." This brooding literary novel qua police procedural begins with the abduction of an 8-year-old girl from her school bus stop in a wealthy New York town. But "Blind Pursuit" stoops to little of the crude button-pushing typical of child-kidnapping thrillers. Instead, Jones depicts the girl's abduction with a minimum of sensationalism, focusing on the subtler effects on the adults involved. It's here that "Blind Pursuit" excels. As in "A Single Shot," Jones' 1996 novel about a hunter who accidentally shoots a teenage runaway, the interior story is as gripping as the exterior plot, both unfolding with an awful inexorability. Jones is especially adept at conveying the numb horror of the child's mother and father, hard-working yuppies who torture themselves with guilt over their parental lapses, especially after they learn that the nanny they hired to care for their two children is a former prostitute under treatment for schizophrenia. Also well-imagined are the reactions of the two detectives on the case, small-town cops who are not nearly jaded enough to remain untroubled by the presence of such evil in their quiet community. The novel's powerful narrative momentum, however, is seriously hobbled by its prose, which is often stiff, awkward and even inept. Somehow, Jones seems to have acquired a tin ear since "A Single Shot." "He put to bed his daughter, who requested to be told a real-life police drama," reads a typical sentence. The author, trained as a lawyer before turning to fiction, repeatedly chooses phrases like "prefatory to" instead of a simple "before," or "Abbott non-responsively turned" where "Abbott turned without answering" would have done the job. And the dialogue is even worse. Here's a conversation between the kidnapped child's distraught parents as they look over their collection of antique weapons: He indicated the garrote. "The boundlessness of mankind's barbarity as evidenced even in our own keepsakes." "Barbarity incites barbarity." Caroline curiously eyed the garrote. "It's horrible." "Even more so for its methodological simplicity, which indicates long and arduous thought preceded its creation." Huh? Where did the characters in this novel (virtually all of whom talk this way) learn to speak English? One can only conclude that they, like their creator, are all escapees from Planet Law School. But even these substantial technical weaknesses are not enough to sink "Blind Pursuit." In his recent work, Jones is investing the crime genre with his own brand of moral seriousness and unsentimental compassion. The results so far have been mixed, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before he produces the high-quality blockbuster that "Blind Pursuit" could have been. Aug. 7, 1997 Gary Krist is the author of two short-story collections, "The Garden State" and "Bone By Bone." BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html