That body over there that just blew up—that's Dutch Shea Jr.'s daughter, or what's left of her. Dutch is our hero [in Dutch Shea, Jr.]. Who's his favorite person? The one joy in his life? His daughter, of course, except she just blew up in the first sentence. Terrorists got her in a restaurant. Dutch made the reservation. And just so you know where we're heading—we're going down. Welcome to John Gregory Dunne country: Catholics, pimps, arsonists, bad fate.

As befits a book whose climax is in its first sentence, Dunne presents not so much a plot that unfolds as a character that unravels. Once the bomb goes off we do little more than follow the vibrations, the shudders, through Dutch's head. Dutch doesn't blow up, he collapses inward for the remaining 352 pages of the novel. Dutch Shea Jr. is broken from page one. He's...