The figure of the inner-city gang-banger, once a potent novelty, is now so overused in movies that even the brief appearance of a callous black drug dealer is enough to induce eye-rolling. It's not that crime and narcotics aren't still problems in urban America; it's that their use as a narrative device has become stale and insulting, especially given that the gangsta has become the predominant image of minorities in the popular media. At first, Paul Beatty's second novel, Tuff, doesn't seem to be much of a pacesetter in that regard. The book opens with the title character—a 300-pound Harlem resident with the given name of Winston Foshay—passed out on the floor, surrounded by the bullet-riddled corpses of his dope-peddling employers. The opening chapter is dim and brutal; as Beatty recounts the details of his anti-hero's thug life, the reader may groan at the familiarity of it all. But, as should be expected from the author of the satirical tableau The White Boy Shuffle, Beatty has a fresher approach in mind: He's more interested in emulating Tom Wolfe than Iceberg Slim. Tuff dusts himself off, steals a fish and a gun from his dead boss, meets up with his disabled and anti-Semitic best friend Tariq, and heads back to Spanish Harlem, where he lives with his wife (a college student studying psychology) and year-old son. Gradually, Beatty reveals more of Tuff's background, including his Black Panther poet father and the female Asian activist who acts as his mentor. He also makes Tuff's passion for foreign films real enough that lengthy references to Luis Buñuel don't seem incongruous. About halfway through the book—after 100-plus pages of vivid and funny slices of life, highlighted by hilarious descriptions of neighborhood money-making schemes—Beatty finally gets to the plot: Tuff decides to run for city council. With affectionate barbs at political opportunists, jaded crooks, aging reactionaries, and unambitious young men, Beatty defies gimmicky storytelling and crafts another sharp, witty mosaic depicting what it means to be black (and, more tellingly, poor) in America. Along the way, he revives the bloodless body of the inner-city gang-banger, animating for it a warm, three-dimensional character.