Here is the quintessential story of a young hoodlum's coming of age. Alex Hamilton is young, intelligent, savvy, and independent - but also subject to violent fits of rage. Raised within the confines of a system that has done nothing but provide him with pain, his frustration and anger are completely natural - and inherently dangerous. Rebellious since his parents split up, Alex is constantly running from foster homes and institutions, yearning to be with his father, a broken man who cannot give his son the home he desperately needs. As Alex is pulled between well-meaning but exhausted social workers and viciously cruel authority figures, his emotions and actions are forever careening off these two disparate influences. Only one constant remains: his no-good, criminally minded peers, who are all too ready to plant illegal ideas in a young, bright mind that's already well on its way to social deviancy. Alex Hammond is a throwaway child of divorced parents. By age 11, he has been kicked out of a variety of institutions, and with each his rage grows more intense. From military academy to juvenile hall to a mental hospital to reform school, by age 15 he's run the gamut, his record filled with documented temper tantrums, escapes, fights with other inmates, attacks on attendants, and attempted murder. When he is released into the custody of an aunt, drug trafficking and armed robbery soon lead to a showdown with authority. Bunker (Dog Eat Dog, LJ 7/96) knows his topic firsthand. This story needed to be told, but it is so intense and the hero so at odds with himself and the world that the reader is left emotionally drained. Recommended for adult collections.?Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. St. Martin's brings back into print the hard-to-find third book (first published in 1980) by ex-con novelist, screenwriter, and actor Bunker (Dog Eat Dog, 1996; The Animal Factory, 1977), whose fictional accounts of life in the American justice system- -from juvie hall to San Quentin--bear none of the theoretical pretensions of Jack Henry Abbott. Bunker shoots straight--his direct and transparent prose captures the ``primacy of violence'' that defines life in the slammer. And his larger point is pretty simple: Once you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, it's hard to break the cycle of recidivism. Especially if you're like young Alex Hamilton--a problem child who's thrown out of numerous military schools and foster homes while his father struggles to find work in post-Depression California. At age 11, despite a high IQ and a love of reading, Alex can't control his anger. After he attacks the housemother at a Home for Boys, he hits the road, surviving on petty thievery, until one robbery escalates into his first assault with a deadly weapon. While in police custody, Alex learns that his father is dead. With no relatives, he's now completely at the mercy of a system that values subservience over fairness. His uncontrolled rage sends him to a mental hospital for observation, where some adult junkies school him in the ways of the street. Diagnosed a ``borderline psychopath,'' Alex's escapades eventually land him in reform school. In constant fear of being ``punked'' (i.e., buggered), he resorts to even more violent behavior. Finally paroled in his mid-teens, Alex tries living with his father's long-estranged sister, but that turns sour quickly. More violence, seemingly inevitable, follows. Throughout, Bunker clearly articulates the ``code'' of prison life and the pathology of the career criminal in raw, muscular prose. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.