Snitch Factory

by Peter Plate

Overview

Amid a background of bank robberies and fatal gunshot wounds, the real drama here is bureaucratic and human. In her response to the adversity all around her, Peter Plate’s Charlene Hassler, a social worker at the huge, anthill-like Department of Social Services complex on San Francisco’s Otis Street, is a literary tour de force. Straight out of Dante’s Inferno, Plate’s DSS is an eternal holding pen of unfulfilled needs and desires. Charlene is under investigation, and snitches are everywhere. A co-worker is murdered. Charlene’s boss and former mentor spends amorous afternoons with her arch-enemy. The custodian burglarizes her desk, then shoots her in the knee after he imagines she’s ratted on him. As the anger and chaos at DSS reach epic proportions, we witness the strange heroism of Charlene’s coworkers when they foil a hold-up; her boss’s real vulnerability after a suicide attempt; and Charlene herself triumphantly winning her personal battle for romance in this true human comedy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583222584
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	11/06/2001
Edition description:	1ST SEVEN
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Named a Literary Laureate of San Francisco in 2004, PETER PLATE taught himself to write fiction during eight years spent squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of many novels, beginning with Black Wheel of Anger (1990) and continuing through his seven neo-noir "psychic histories" of San Francisco, where he still lives and writes today.

Editorial Reviews

San Francisco's precarious welfare bureaucracy shudders with random acts of violence and corruption in this poorly realized account of urban decay set in the city's seamy Mission district. Social worker Charlene Hassler has abandoned whatever political ambitions she once held and now concentrates on giving people food stamps and helping them get the most they can from the welfare system. But as if dealing with the hostility of her clients, the rampant crime and violence in the neighborhood and the Byzantine regulations of social-service agencies weren't enough, someone at work is out to get her fired. Plate (One Foot Off the Gutter) fills the novel with evocative details of Mission street life, but elsewhere can't seem to decide whether he wants gritty urban realism or broad satire-Charlene's boss is named Petard, her work rival is named Lavoris. Worse, in Charlene's first-person narration, he substitute's numerous heavy-handed and gratuitous anatomical references-menstrual stains, yeast infections, bra rash, labia rings etc. ("Have you ever been in debt? I hate it worse than getting a Pap smear")-for a subtler evocation of a woman's voice. Ultimately, there is little plot and the supporting characters are ciphers, leaving the reader with a few glimpses of the welfare system and the Mission and some vague social comment buried under a muddle of bad writing. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly