Bobby Fallon is a tough kid who, like most Hamill heroes, faces a test of wits, determination, and endurance in which his own heart and prowess comes to the fore.

His character, formed, in part, by an education in the mean streets and bolstered by rage at his father and a passion for his mother, is marked by a fatal flaw which, like Achilles, Cuchullain, and the nameless berserkers of the Anglo-Saxon epics, engineers both triumph and defeat. He flies into a murderous rage when he fights, a primitive survival mechanism which prematurely ends his amateur career and propels him, unschooled, into the big time before he is ready: "something else was happening: sound was coming out of me, the wild crazy screaming anger, high-pitched against the deeper darker roar of the crowd." Bobby has a good heart, though, and he is generous with his friends and his...