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PARTISAN REVIEW
mild-tempered Ethan embrace the role of sleuth-avenger, impatient with
the ineffectual efforts of the police to find the killer. Grace becomes
depressed, and drinks heavily. Dwight seems to change less than Ethan as
weeks pass after the accident, but he cannot bring himself to confess his
crime; as a lawyer he knows that his previous conviction for domestic vio–
lence will put him in jeopardy for a manslaughter conviction. He cannot,
either, destroy the evidence of his crime. He rents a new car and locks his
old one in his garage but leaves unremoved the bit of Josh's clothing that
has stuck to the fender. It is the hidden car that causes the relation with
Sam to go further down; during one of his visits, Sam impulsively presses
the electronic garage-opener to take out the grill for a cookout he has been
promised-only to be violently stopped and thrown to the ground, again
the innocent victim of his father's violence as well as of his father's decei t.
Schwartz's strength as a novelist lies in the subtlety of this aspect of the
story which explores the nuances of feeling in such incidents and exhibits
character. But, as the police detective informs Ethan, hit-and-run crimes
are the most difficult to solve, though the thriller form requires the novel–
ist to ignore this stop to narrative. Schwartz contrives, with some
improbability, therefore, to enable his avenger to draw closer and closer to
his goal, though the regular police have failed. Coincidence must arrive to
aid him, such as the fact that Ruth, who remembers the time when Sam
came back with his father with a bruise on his head, is Emma's music
teacher, and that Ethan gets to know her son, who is Sam-and Sam tells
him about that night when his father hit a dog. When the chase reaches its
conclusion, the novelist attempts a rescue into seriousness. Ethan's rage
drops. Suddenly, he sees his quarry as another father who yearns to love.
"Go back to your son," he says. The tone of the writing, the searching out
of a moral and psychological theme has nearly redeemed the corniness.
