Uncle Janice by Matt Burgess

Published by Doubleday on January 6, 2015

Uncle Janice has been favorably compared to Clockers, at least by blurb writers. While Clockers is a better novel, I understand the comparison. The subject matter is similar, although Uncle Janice eventually travels in a different direction. More importantly, both books are overflowing with attitude. The dialog is often hilarious but it always rings true. The characters are multifaceted (although, unlike Clockers, the focus in Uncle Janice is almost exclusively on the cops rather than the drug dealers). The prose is vigorous and smart.

Undercover narcs in NYPD call themselves uncles. Janice Itwaru has been an uncle for 17 months but the drug buys she has been able to make are on a "downward slope," a trend that does not endear her to a supervisor who is all about numbers. Janice attributes her decline in productivity to the arrests that are made immediately after she makes a buy, exposing her undercover identity to the seller and eventually to the neighborhood. She is a month away from promotion to detective unless her declining statistics are used as an excuse to send her back where she started, wearing a uniform on patrol. Arrest quotas are illegal but Janice clearly needs to meet her quota. To do that, she may need to poach buys that should be made by other uncles. She may also need to charm young men into committing crimes that they never would never have committed without her persuasion. In that sense, Uncle Janice is a more realistic and insightful look at undercover drug cops than the heroic images that are served up on television.

Readers who do not like a book unless they like the protagonist may find little value here. Janice sees her undercover work as a stepping stone to a higher rank and a better life. She is not particularly admirable but neither is her job, which is based on using deceit to make pointless arrests. She behaves badly and protects her career by covering up her misconduct. I think that makes her realistic but others might find it difficult to warm up to her character. On the other hand, the time Janice spends dealing with her mother's dementia is a source of sympathy.

While Janice is far from perfect, she recognizes her failings. The novel gets its weight from a moral dilemma Janice faces when her failings force her to decide whether she will use the same tactics against dishonest cops that she employs to harass low-level drug dealers. Her resolution of that dilemma is clever if abrupt.

I admired the Matt Burgess' writing style here as much as I did in Dogfight, A Love Story, another novel that reminded me of Clockers. Even if Uncle Janice doesn't quite reach the admirable heights of Clockers (or, for that matter, Dogfight), I do not hesitate to recommend it to fans of crime fiction.

RECOMMENDED

Dogfight, A Love Story by Matt Burgess

Published by Doubleday on September 21, 2010

Dogfight, A Love Story was a love story for me in this sense: I loved reading it. The novel is fresh, very funny, occasionally morbid, and always energetic. It is the product of a very talented writer. In its setting and characters it reminded me of Clockers (a book I greatly enjoyed) minus the cops and with added humor, but the writing in Dogfight is of a higher quality. Burgess' writing style is exactly right for a literary crime novel: sharp and zestful and evocative. The dramatic climax (coming just before an ending that is essentially an epilogue) is frenetic, explosive, intense: powerful stuff that made me utter an involuntary "wow."

Dogfight follows Alfredo Batista during the days before and after his brother Tariq (f/k/a Jose Jr.) is released from prison. While Tariq has been serving his sentence, Alfredo, a small time drug dealer in Queens, has taken up with Tariq's girlfriend, who is now pregnant with Alfredo's child. Worried about his brother's tendency toward violence, Alfredo wants to give him a homecoming present. To that end, he engineers a robbery from a Russian street dealer -- a poor decision that will soon lead to unexpected trouble. He also tries to arrange a dogfight, despite never having seen one (dogfights not being the competition of choice in Queens).

Matt Burgess does a masterful job of merging the plot-driven demands of genre fiction with the character-driven sensibility of literary fiction. Some readers won't like Alfredo or some of the other characters because they commit crimes. But even readers who generally want to read about morally pure characters might find Alfredo to be worth their time. He's imperfect (aren't we all?) but he isn't thuggish. Despite doing something during the novel's course for which he will probably never forgive himself, he has a conscience and he experiences some personal growth, if not full redemption, by the novel's end. In any event, all of the central characters in Dogfight have distinctive, fully realized personalities. It is easy to understand their actions even if the reader might disapprove of them. At least to me, they were all interesting, filled with credible emotions, self-doubt, yearnings, regrets -- all the stuff that makes us human.

Finally, lest you be alarmed by the title, be assured that no dogs were harmed in the writing of this novel. This is a work of fiction, after all. Speaking as someone whose best friend is a golden retriever, I can safely predict that most dog lovers will recognize that this novel does not glorify or glamorize dog fighting. Quite the opposite, in fact. Animal lovers should not avoid this excellent book because of its unfortunate title.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED