Balling the Jack

Frat-boy paralegal Tom Reasons makes a drunken bet and ends up having to raise $40,000 in a slick debut that exposes, among other things, the seamy New York underworld of dart games. The lure of the bull's eye isn't Tom's only vice: he is (as he loves to insist) a man's man who lives, when he isn't hurling darts, for beer-drinking, card-playing, bachelor parties and ""one on one,"" which he gets with surprising frequency. It's hard to decide which is more irritating, Tom's relentless self-aggrandizement (""if I win--and I win a lot--I take on the town"") or the inanity of his observations on life (""The better the weekend, the tougher the Monday, they say""). It may irritate readers that insufferable Tom actually gets the girl, behaves so honorably toward an honest immigrant that he sacrifices his own job and beats the Mafia at its own game. Baldwin's prose manages to raise darts, perhaps the dullest of spectator sports, to a new level of tedium: ""In darts it doesn't take a lot to knock you off stride. An eight of an inch turns a triple 20 into a triple 1."" But Baldwin brings blowhards of Tom's ilk to life, no mean feat whether you hate the guy or grudgingly recognize his type. Bn Discovery Program selection; film rights to New Line Cinema.(July)