MACHINE

When Be Be Gonzago, boss of the Brooklyn Democratic-Party machine, is shot dead by a mystery-assailant, it appears that the intended victim was N.Y. Gov. Wolfington, who was standing nearby. But Gonzago's long-estranged son Joseph, 1960s radical and UCLA political-science teacher, begins to suspect otherwise when he comes home to Brooklyn. Could it be that Gonzago was killed because he was just about to endorse reform-candidate Kelly (instead of Wolfington) in the upcoming primary? So it seems. And Joseph, while stewing over his love/hate relationship with the late Be Be, resolves to avenge his father--by winning control of the Brooklyn machine (thanks to Be Be's blackmail-file), backing Kelly, and sabotaging Wolfington's campaign. Some familiar complications ensue: the prime suspect in the Gonzago murder isn't Wolfington himself, but Brooklyn henchman Sydney Weingarten, who just happens to be the father of Joseph's old flame Gloria; thus, while Joseph and Gloria renew their goopy passion, Weingarten is sending out killers to ""neutralize"" Joseph and his allies. But eventually, after foiling several assassins and reducing the corrupt politicos to jelly with his noble dirty-tricks, Joseph triumphs--crushing Wolfington's career. . . and uncovering an implausible surprise-mastermind behind the murders. Hamill (Stomping Ground) works hard to fill out this routine revenge-melodrama. There are pretentious, contrived allusions to Hamlet throughout, many of them just silly. (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become Rosario and Gulatta.) There are tacky, half-baked roman a clef references to actual N.Y. politics--e.g., US Senator ""David Hallahan,"" a large Irishman who is forced (by a gleeful Joseph) into reversing his pro-Israel position. (""Hallahan was smoldering, Joseph picked it up, and all at once decided to run with it, fuck this fat pig. . . ."") There's soapy, sentimental belaboring of the Gonzago/Weingarten family problems. But Joseph is never more than an ill-motivated, romanticized cardboard-hero (""He's not handsome, he's beautiful,"" says Gloria's mother); and the exposÉ of the party machine is undermined by Hamill's stagey, corny plotting. In sum, then: a passable mixture of pulp-vengeance and political backstabbing--sometimes enlivened by gritty Brooklyn dialogue. (See George V. Higgins' A Choice of Enemies for vivid, textured fictionalization of machine-politics.)