Rookie Blues: The Nick Train Stories

As explained by the closing author's note, this middling period thriller from veteran author Lupoff comprises three previously published short stories and a newly written novel, all featuring the character Nicholas Train. It won't surprise readers to learn that the full-length but underdeveloped work, also titled Rookie Blues, originated as an afterthought to its shorter companions. As the novel reveals, before basic training in "Benning's School for Boys," post-WWII demobilization in "What It Means," and a trip to 1948 Los Angeles in "The Laddie in the Lake," Train underwent a rite of passage as a rookie police officer in 1938 New York City. He's not long on the job before realizing to his naive horror that his partner is shaking down local merchants for payoffs. The loss of innocence caused by this revelation, unlikely to have been news to many citizens of the time, rings particularly false in the light of Train's prior career in the rough-and-tumble world of professional boxing. A developing relationship with a young Chinese-American woman, Susan Chen, along with several murders, provides distraction from Train's unconvincing crisis of conscience, but don't compensate for a colorless personality not much more fleshed out in the following stories. (Apr.)