Bell's preoccupation seems to be with creating memorable characters, not with addressing social issues. In The Washington Square Ensemble, as in his later novels, urban social problems such as organized crime and the drug traffic provide a backdrop against which the characters can be seen. For example, Johnny and his group are drug dealers, but they are portrayed no less sympathetically than the policemen. Bell describes their attitudes and their methods of evading both the law and rival groups, but his tone is matter of fact, not judgmental.

Bell likewise adopts a pose of detachment in his portrayal of urban poverty and crime Thus, Holy Mother's accounts of his gruesome "hits" take on the surreal quality of nightmares as he describes them. Similarly, Yusuf Ali's grotesque narrative of his life among the rats and Holy Mother's account of his treatment after the Attica riots would be...