Until now, Peter Maas has concentrated on writing nonfiction, with admirable results…. We have come to expect from him a keen reportage that can evoke with equal sureness … the barren moonscape of a South Bronx street or the languid luxury of a northern Westchester tennis court. We have come to rely on his intimate knowledge of both law enforcement and criminal organizations in New York and elsewhere, an expertise again abundantly evident here. We have also come to trust the validity of his observations on the various real people he has written about. But "Made in America" is his first novel, and, liberated here from the constraints of writing about actual persons or events, he reveals a previously unsuspected capacity for creating flesh-and-blood characters and constructing an exciting, complicated plot.

His hero is Richie Flynn, a former football player for the New York Giants, who has one glorious...