The Art Teacher

British author Read manages an impressive feat in his first novel: he has turned a high school art class into the focal point of a tense crime story. Patrick Owen, former guitarist for a one-hit band called the Forsaken, is now forsaken himself, trying heroically to teach art to teenagers in a school just outside London. His main enemy is one of his students, Denis Roberts, who leads the Union Souljas gang. Gang warfare permeates the book, but Owen is also at war with his colleagues and superiors, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his ex-band members, and even the mother of a student he tries to rescue from the gangs. When Denis is murdered, Patrick is the prime suspect, which adds the press and the police to his list of antagonists. Read characterizes gang culture as a symptom of overall social malaise and class division. The lack of sentimentality lends realism, but the pervasive hopelessness makes the upbeat ending less credible. The thrills are the main thing, and Read delivers them often and well. (Jan.)