MICK

When the bars, brawls, and trash-talk he's grown up with start to wear on an Irish-American teenager, he learns that it's not that easy to walk away. Lynch (Slot Machine, p. 1433, etc.) puts Mick's changing neighborhood under a pitiless, and (one may hope) parodic, light: Everyone drinks, all barroom conversations are pathetic exhibitions of narrow-mindedness and violent bigotry, the Cambodian and Gay Pride marchers in the St. Patrick's Day parade are assaulted (as police watch) by Mick's older brother, Terry, and his cronies. Cowed by threats, Mick reluctantly joins in and is caught on the TV news. Though the recipient of endless free rounds at the bar for this, at school he becomes both a pariah and a target. From nearly everyone he knows, Mick hears the same message—``You're one of us, boy''—until he meets Toy, a loner who holds out the possibility of something different. In a retaliatory attack, Toy escapes, but Mick, who tries to defend him, is left bleeding on the sidewalk. Stay tuned: Lynch continues this harsh, headlong tale in two other entries in the Blue-Eyed Son series: Blood Relations (ISBN 0-06- 025399-1) and the upcoming Dog Eat Dog. (Fiction. 12+)