Gary Rivlin

Drive By

“The book reads like good fiction.”

Boston Globe

“Like Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) or Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song) Rivlin takes a crime and makes of it a mirror for its time and place. Yet Drive-By emits a low hum of pure despair that sounds new in the annals of American bloodshed…a gifted California reporter…[with] a sharp eye and a clear voice.”

Boyd Tonkin, New Statesman (Great Britain)

“Emblematic of the helpless fury and self-destructive codes of street justice prevailing in the inner city…an impressive marshalling of facts.”

Darcy Frey, The New York Times

“Rivlin’s gift is his ability to make his subjects whole and human…The book reads like good fiction, peppered with tough language and pervaded by suspense. It is a tightly written story about a collection of lives bound by the circumstances of murder.”

Zachary Dowdy, Boston Globe

“Rivlin chronicles a familiar tragedy, but he has given it a human face…a deeply moving account of horrors that arrive in an instant but just won’t go away…[an] excellent investigative book.”

Jackie Jones, San Francisco Chronicle

“A fascinating read from beginning to end. Its message lingers not in your dreams but in your nightmares.”

Jeanne May, Detroit Free Press

“Rivlin’s dissection of the crime itself is compelling enough. But even more so is the way in which he shows how modern inner-city life makes such unthinkable crimes inevitable….Spare and direct, Drive-By is rife with cruel irony.”

John D. Thomas, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Powerful; a rich exploration of a surprisingly multifaceted crime.”

Kirkus Review
  • Drive By
  • Praise

  • Published by Henry Holt, this book, my second, was a finalist in both PEN-West’s 1995 “Best of the West” and the 1995 San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association competition. Drive-By was also named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The book offers a look at the youth violence epidemic plaguing the country in the 1990s through the dissection of a single drive-by shooting that left a 13-year-old dead and a pair of 14-year-olds in the hospital.

  • “The book reads like good fiction.”

    Boston Globe

    “Like Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) or Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song) Rivlin takes a crime and makes of it a mirror for its time and place. Yet Drive-By emits a low hum of pure despair that sounds new in the annals of American bloodshed…a gifted California reporter…[with] a sharp eye and a clear voice.”

    Boyd Tonkin, New Statesman (Great Britain)

    “Emblematic of the helpless fury and self-destructive codes of street justice prevailing in the inner city…an impressive marshalling of facts.”

    Darcy Frey, The New York Times

    “Rivlin’s gift is his ability to make his subjects whole and human…The book reads like good fiction, peppered with tough language and pervaded by suspense. It is a tightly written story about a collection of lives bound by the circumstances of murder.”

    Zachary Dowdy, Boston Globe

    “Rivlin chronicles a familiar tragedy, but he has given it a human face…a deeply moving account of horrors that arrive in an instant but just won’t go away…[an] excellent investigative book.”

    Jackie Jones, San Francisco Chronicle

    “A fascinating read from beginning to end. Its message lingers not in your dreams but in your nightmares.”

    Jeanne May, Detroit Free Press

    “Rivlin’s dissection of the crime itself is compelling enough. But even more so is the way in which he shows how modern inner-city life makes such unthinkable crimes inevitable….Spare and direct, Drive-By is rife with cruel irony.”

    John D. Thomas, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    “Powerful; a rich exploration of a surprisingly multifaceted crime.”

    Kirkus Review
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