After a recommendation I grabbed a copy of this, figuring it might be somewhere between an Eddie Bunker and Andy Dufresne kinda thing. Instead, we’re met with an even more fish-out-of-water 47 year old Jewish father of two sharing a cell with a neo-nazi hulk called Kansas. The book chronicles his first year in the pen, from waking up in county in a j-cat cell all the way through his impending parole, with some demons exorcised (both inside and out) along the way. Oh, and J-cat cell you say? You’ll just have to read the book, fish. 
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There’s an awful lot of humour for a prison book, and it’s a surprisingly easy read because of it. After some early explanations of prison-slang you find yourself immersed inside; well, about as far into prison as any sane person would like to be in any case. There’s also an unusual amount of similarities to Prison Break throughout, but seeing as the book pre-dates the show it’s clear to see who is influencing who. |
The reason for Lerner’s incarceration while hinted at throughout, isn’t clear until late in the book, when he takes the story back to when he first met Dwayne Hasselman (a pseudonym for Mark Slavin). To start off with, you’re eager to get back to prison, but this side-story draws you in much like the rest of the book. The only problem that faced Lerner (and thus put him in prison) was that there were no good witnesses to the claims he lays out here in regards to Slavin.
Once we’re back in prison, the book abruptly ends. Just like that. While I thought it might be sequel worthy, Lerner’s site plainly states that he was paroled in 2002 and is currently working on a novel. It’s a shame really, because the Hasselman side-story isn’t a fitting way to finish the book – still, it might have been more dramatic than ending in a favourable parole-board meeting.
A great read, but the lack of finality bugged me.
