Slow Motion Riot

1992 Best First Novel Edgar® Award Winner
A Times Literary Supplement’s International Book of the Year

The award-winning and high-acclaimed crime novel SLOW MOTION RIOT is back in print and more relevant than ever.

Steven Baum is a young probation officer in New York City. Every day he deals with the whole spectrum of criminal life—crackheads, sex abusers, white-collar criminals—and tries to find something to salvage. Where anyone else would sensibly turn away, he pursues his dream of turning around the Ultimate Hopeless Case. Then he runs into Darryl King.

Darryl is a thug, a violet sociopath, a hardcore product of the urban underclass. But somehow what he’s become is not entirely his fault. He’s come of age in a racist, corrupt society that worships material success, values winning at any cost, and encourages violence as a means to survive and dominate. In his struggle to make a name for himself in the gang underworld, he runs into a major obstacle: his probation officer, Steve Baum.

Each represents for the other the testing point that will make or break him.

Darryl becomes Steve’s responsibility, and then his biggest headache when it emerges that Darryl is a lead suspect in a high-profile murder. Steve, the progressive idealist, is given a crash-course in harsh urban reality when he’s charged with the responsibility for tracking Darryl down after he disappears and bringing him to justice. The resulting manhunt divides their city and turns Darryl into an unlikely local hero. But then their ultimate confrontation turns everything upside-down and leads to a conclusion that’s wilder than a street riot and leaves them both permanently altered.

SLOW MOTION RIOT was published to acclaim and controversy in 1991. It was named as one of the Times Literary Supplement’s International Books of the Year by novelist Patricia Highsmith, who called the novel “unforgettable.” In 1992, the Mystery Writers of America gave SLOW MOTION RIOT the award for best first novel. Its cult reputation has grown ever since, and now the time has come to introduce the book to a new readership.