The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York's Bloods and Crips

Deutsch, a criminal justice writer for Newsday, spent a year among the Bloods and Crips who occupy the Triangle, a once prosperous but now blighted area in Hempstead, Long Island, described by one local (and former Iraq vet) as a "war zone." Shootings there are commonplace, as are beatings and sexual assaults. Anyone in the area who is perceived to cooperate with the police is dealt with swiftly and severely; and so the cycle goes on. Deutsch's immersion in the community is evident from the range of people he profiles%E2%80%94from a newly initiated gang member to a college graduate who left the corporate world for the drug trade (he likens the long-running Bloods-Crips feud to "some kind of corporate fight you'd read about in the Wall Street Journal, only this is about our kind of business: rock cocaine"), to the ex-gang members and churchgoers who patrol the area nightly in an effort to bring peace. There are many stories here, and Deutsch gives readers a 360-degree view of the community. He describes a complex problem rooted in a lack of hope and opportunity that many participants see as insoluble. This is a crucial and enthralling work on gangs and the communities they inhabit. B&w photos. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (Dec.)