[Hunt bears a] kind of eerie connection to Graham Greene's Brighton Rock…. It is not an imitation in the usual sense yet never seems able to stop imitating and be itself. Alvarez … assembles a cast of disagreeable characters and then traps them in a strong plot. Isn't that what Graham Greene does? But it isn't that simple…. Jessup is facing middle age, he is destroying himself, and he spends a lot of this long novel not taking things in…. The only being he can care for is his dog, and the only activity that brings him to life is playing poker—and it is not surprising that the moments with the dog and the poker scenes are much the best things in the book….

Alvarez wants Jessup himself to be a drifting, unlikable man bent on something; he surrounds him with shadowy and unlikable characters out of whose...