DEATH WISH

This takes place on the next street where you live and converts that unhappily most commonplace of crimes, the mugging, into a loaded thriller. What happens when quiet, civic-minded, liberal Paul Benjamin learns that his wife, Esther, and daughter, Carol, have been its victims? Esther dies quickly while Carol gradually withdraws from the world altogether. As for Paul, lonely, ineffectual, and askew -- he begins to fantasize and rationalize and before too long has bought a gun which he directs at a succession of addicts, blacks, heisters, etc. in his ""vigilante"" role. Garfield, as always, writes with a certain know how, even more impetus, and adds a sockdolager finish. . . . A fast burn.