SOURCE: Clute, John. “Talk of the Town.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4497 (9-15 June 1989): 634.

In the following review, Clute asserts that Russo's themes in The Risk Pool are ultimately rewarding though the narrative can be meandering and overlong.

Those who finish The Risk Pool will fully earn any pleasures Richard Russo may have to offer in this, his second novel about life in the small decaying industrial city of Mohawk, sunk in its worn-down valley some miles upriver from Albany, New York. Russo is not an author to worry about inflicting longueurs on his readers, and in Ned Hall he has found an ideal protagonist for the relentless amplitude of his way with a story. Ned has a ghost to lay—his memories of growing up with a hard-drinking scallywag father—and the great length of The Risk Pool neatly exemplifies the compulsiveness of his need to make sense...