There Ain't No Justice, Just Us (which is, I might add, a great title) is the story of David, a veteran of the '60s protest movement who now finds himself living out of place and time in an impersonal Chicago. Just as the city seems to be slowly dying, so has David's once firm faith in Marxism. Unlike his former comrades, David has remained an activist and as a result, his marriage his crumbling and he risks seeing his children taken away from him. Hoping to rediscover his political faith, David takes a job at ChicagoLard, a Hellish factory where he helps to organize the racially divided workers into organizing a strike that leads them into increasingly heated conflict with both their bosses and their own union. There Ain't No Justice, Just Us is an unabashedly political novel. It wears its Marxist sympathies on its sleeve and, like a modern day Upton Sinclair, author Gregory Alan Norton peppers his plot with scenes in which his characters discuss and defend socialism against premature reports of the movement's death. What sets Norton's novel apart from other political novels is that Norton never allows his ideology to overwhelm his story or characters. As opposed to other Marxist writers, Norton allows his politics to come through the character as opposed to crudely shaping his characters to force them to conform to political theory. As a result, Norton is an honest enough writer to create human capitalists and flawed socialists instead of creating a black-and-white polemic. Ranging from his own sometimes rather crude narrator to the strikers' flamboyant attorney Lexy (who comes across as everything Bella Abzug was supposed to be) to the book's most complicated character, a Neo-Nazi mechanic who turns out to be the most committed striker as well as the least trustworthy, the book is full of memorable and vivid characters who capture the reader's interest. Whether or not one agrees with Norton's politics (and, as my other reviews should make obviously, I am one hundred eighty degrees to the right of the author), its hard not to care about these characters and impossible not to become emotionally involved in the outcome of their struggle. This is a book that I would recommend to any open minded reader interested in modern political fiction -- one need not agree with Norton to admire the craft and skill with which he delivers his message. Gregory Alan Norton is not a household name and There Ain't No Justice, No Just Us is an independently-published, "underground" book. However, that doesn't change the fact that Norton has managed to pull off what so many more bestselling authors have continually failed to accomplish. He has written a proudly and defiant left-wing novel that can impress and enthrall even as right-wing a reader as myself.

Of the three books that have been published about "The Fugitive" television series (my favorite of all time), this one I would rate as the most flawed. "The Fugitive Recaptured" by Ed Robertson and "The Official Fan's Guide to The Fugitive" by Mel Proctor are both much better.

Cooper's book is largely a series of summaries of each of the 120 episodes in the four-year series. The problem is that careless factual errors pop up again and again. And I am basing this on checking the summaries of only the 60-odd episodes (just slightly over half the total) that I'm familiar with. Who knows about the others!

For example in Episode 27, "Never Stop Running," the author doesn't even get the name right for the character played by Claude Akins. He said it was Jim, when in fact it was Ralph. In Episode 63, "Crack in a Crystal Ball," in which a wife of a phony clairvoyant drives Kimble to a certain destination, Cooper says, "She leads him (Kimble) to believe that she is in trouble and asks him for help....They arrive at the agreed-upon location, but Mrs. Mitchell tips off Kimble and he escapes before the police arrive." Wrong. She drove Kimble because she said she had a lead on the whereabouts of the one-armed man. SHE was the one doing the helping (or so she claimed). She also did not tip him off. She just dropped Kimble off and drove away. He learned about the trap from a friend on the phone.

Sometimes the errors are small, but they still count as errors. In Episode 25, "Taps for a Dead War," the book says, "The police arrive. Joe and Millie hide Kimble in the house." I just saw that episode recently on video. In fact, he hides behind a tree outside.

Perhaps the most egregious example of an inaccurate summary is Episode No. 53, "The Survivors," (one of my favorites) in which Kimble secretly visits his financially troubled in-laws. The book first says Kimble wanted to help them find "a savings passbook, part of his wife's effects." In fact, what he was looking for was any information recorded on paper about a forgotten bank account. Eventually they find some hand-written notes inside a regular book. Cooper also says that Kimble's father in law "believes him innocent." Actually the father in law is uncertain.When asked about his opinion on Kimble's guilt, he says, "I don't know." Also Cooper says that at the end of the story "Mrs. Waverly (is) now thinking that perhaps Kimble is not guilty of murdering her daughter after all." There is no hint of this in the story. The ONLY reason Mrs. Waverly helped Kimble was because she was trying to heal her damaged relationship with her daughter.

Another example: in Episode 14, "The Girl From Little Egypt," a story that starts with a woman hitting Kimble with her car, the book says, "When he awakes, Ruth sneaks him out of the hospital." Not true. They left openly together.

I think John Cooper should do a second version of this book with the various errors corrected.

I really wanted to like this book. Alas, it's a good idea poorly executed. Beginning with its misleading title (quite a bit of the artwork is found outside the confines of Detroit City Limits), Art in Detroit Public Places is a narrow paperback stuffed with photographs and descriptions of public works of art in the Metro area.

Each mosaic, statue, or sculpture is given a lone, poorly reproduced black and white picture apparently taken from the same angle by David Clements. How can a picture snapped from across the street capture the impact of something like The Heidelberg Project? A solitary monochromatic image eschews the splendor of the enormous collection of junk with its telephone poles decorated with doll heads and artist Tyree Guyton's ever-present motif of playful polka dots. I've seen inept tourists take better pictures.

Alongside these pictures, Dennis Alan Nawrocki pens sketchy descriptions of the works, their creators, and their current status. It's rather ironic that this is the second edition of the work as the writing is aggravatingly set in the present. One would hope that the language would be given a more indefinite time frame. Instead of saying "recently" or "currently," it'd be smarter to have dates cited.

Even the maps that precede each of the five sections of the book are problematic. These graphics are slightly better than if a dot-matrix printer had produced them. In addition, very little effort would need to be expended to list the location of the artwork in succeeding pages on these maps. While this might seem a trifling issue, it exemplifies how Art in Detroit Public Places is an overly ambitious, under-produced mess. (ISBN: 0814327028)