This early 1970s thriller as well as the 1975 movie based on it hold up even after several decades, but the novel approach of the novel 14told as if it were a true story, taken directly from the official investigative report 14does have more verisimilitude as a book than a movie.

Author James Mills 19 conceit is that a detailed New York City police report has been leaked to him and he has merely arranged the constituent reports and interviews without inserting his own narrative. Nice trick. Of course, the entire book consists of the author telling a story through fake reports and interviews. The over-all effect is convincing. (Except that he has a psychiatrist 19s report describe a patient 19s 1Ceffect 1D when the word a shrink would use is 1Caffect. 1D The author 19s knowledge of police procedures is presumably better than his knowledge of psychiatry.)

The fake report technique allows the story to be told from different viewpoints and from varying degrees of distance. At the beginning and end we get dry reports that first intrigue us but at last regretfully take us away from the story. In between, the interviews acquaint us with the characters and their part in the story through their own words. The initial crime reports raise more questions than they answer. A police detective named Beauregard 1CBo 1D Lockley kills an undercover police detective named Patty Butler. Why? How did that happen? Was it an accident or a murder? Through alternating interviews (plus an unpublished magazine interview with Butler, a copy of which had been given to the police department for approval), we get pieces of the story and also come to see that without understanding who these people are, their actions would be even less understandable.

By interviewing different characters and asking each what he makes of the others, Mills 19 Internal Affairs investigator, Captain Strichter, effectively gives us different perspectives on each individual. The reader must sort through these different versions and draw his own conclusions, though Mills skillfully leads us to favor some conclusions over others. Is Lockley jealous over Patty? Probably not overtly, but he himself says 1Cmaybe. 1D Is he blinded by job frustrations, romantic fantasies, or his father 19s expectations? Despite initial impressions and secondary misgivings, does he have the potential to become a good police officer or is Det. Richard 1CCrunch 1D Blackstone, Lockley 19s partner, right that somebody should have saved Lockley a lot of trouble and told him upfront that this job was never for him? Butler is an intriguing figure in an early 1970s novel. She is only 22 and one of the most successful narcotics officers in the department, having lured more drug dealers into selling drugs to her than any of her colleagues. Some officers, including one of the interviewees, are dismissive, thinking that she has an unfair advantage in being able to bat her eyes and get what she wants, but others note that her job is very dangerous even though she herself dismisses the risks. Is Butler brave or foolhardy or a little of both?

One of the characters, Thomas Henderson a/k/a the Stick, remains distant from us until the last few chapters. We first meet him through the hearsay of people who do not really know him. For a while, we know him mainly from his police dossier which outlines his rise from an impoverished inner city childhood to captaincy of a drug ring before the age of 20. However, during the last few chapters, he and Bo Lockley spend twenty-two hours together in an enclosed space, and Lockley 19s account of these hours most nearly brings the Stick to life.

A gritty description of New York 19s Times Square in the early 1970s is at the heart of the novel. As someone who was young and occasionally in New York at that time, reading this novel now makes me aware of how historical that period has become. At one point, Lockley is in Times Square and he needs to call his superior. Nowadays, no problem: just pull out your cell phone and call the lieutenant. But in 1971, cell phones were science fiction, and Lockley has to find a pay phone. But the numerous pay phones along the street have all been vandalized and are completely useless. He has to find a hotel with working phones in the lobby. Meanwhile, Lockley has left his only friend, a legless war veteran named Joey Eagan, to watch his suspects until he returns. This proves a major challenge because in order to follow them from 47th to 38th streets Eagan has to chase them on a skate board propelled by his hands. When Lockley finds Eagan, the vet 19s hands are bloody from pounding the concrete with his knuckles for some ten blocks. Why did Eagan do this for Lockley? We learn that Lockley is the only person who treats Eagan as a human being rather than a freak. It tells you something about Eagan and something about Lockley.

The point of the titular report to the police commissioner is to get to the bottom of the case and find out whether Lockley is solely to blame or if others are shirking their responsibility for the scandal. Thus, another source of conflict is the police brass, the lieutenants and captains and deputy chiefs who spend too much of their time worrying about office politics. Although it has tragic consequences, the corruption in this novel is contained, but the question remains as to whether there is anything wrong with the system. What, at any point along the way, could others have done to make this situation right before it went so wrong?

This novel was written roughly around the time of a major investigation into police corruption in New York City. Famously, a police officer named Frank Serpico testified that corrupt police were numerous enough to be able to intimidate honest police officers into silence and complicity. I am reminded of the case of a New York policeman who was battling corruption in the late 1980s. A mutual friend arranged for him to speak to Serpico, who had been retired for nearly twenty years by then. In the middle of the active policeman 19s description of his difficulties getting police officials to combat corruption, Serpico began to laugh uncontrollably. The police officer asked what was so funny, and Serpico apologized. It was not that any of this was funny, but it made him realize that nothing had really changed since 1970. ( )