BLUES FOR CHARLIE DARWIN

Detective Noah Green—50, lonely, Jewish—is the cop-hero of this Greenwich Village procedural, which features lots of rough ethnic talk, criss-crossing sexual perversions, and (no surprise to Hentoff readers) digressions into jazz-chat. Green's primary case: the stabbing death of freelance editor Kathleen Ryan Ginsburg, wife of an N.Y.U. prof—the obvious suspect. But then Green uncovers Kathleen's underground life as a sadistically inclined lesbian. . . while murder #2 pops up: the similar stabbing of Noah's chum Emma, a black book-store-owner married to a jazz musician (who suspiciously disappears). And the two investigations both involve a homosexual pimp/informer who's having his troubles with a black drug/sex crime-king—though the links between the cases never develop satisfyingly. Weak, too, are the implausible psycho-motives and the stagy excesses in the down-and-dirty dialogue. Still, with vivid Village atmosphere and a nice romance (youngish reporter Shannon) for Green: garishly lively N.Y.C. cop-stuff, especially for jazz fans.