The Barnes & Noble ReviewA magazine columnist once criticized Anna Quindlen for "arguing strenuously" in her New York Times Op-Ed column that "spousal abuse was bad." Well, there's nothing strenuous or argumentative about Quindlen's new novel Black and Blue. Narrated with a reserve and precision that lets the story speak for itself, it is a compelling account of one very troubled family and stands as eloquent testimony to the devastating consequences of domestic violence.Domestic life has served as Quindlen's touchstone in much of her journalism and all of her fiction. With her third novel, the first to be published since she quit The New York Times in 1994, she has pried apart the bulwark of the family to expose one of its dirtiest little secrets. Despite the 1990s sensibility that allows us to talk openly about all kinds of subjects that were once taboo—breast cancer, incest, drunk driving—domestic abuse remains shrouded in an old-fashioned prudishness. But any reporter who has thumbed through a day's worth of complaints at a police precinct, as Quindlen no doubt has, knows that most of them are dispassionate accounts of the brutality that regularly passes between husbands and wives.The family that Quindlen sketches for us is a familiar stereotype for domestic abuse. Bobby Benedetto is a second-generation Italian cop from Brooklyn, the type who worships his mama (especially her red sauce), describes his father as "some piece of work," and peppers his remarks with casual bigotry. He's also a fanatical bodybuilder who enjoys his liquor. Fran easily fits the role of quiet, dutifulwife. She marries at 21, bears a son, works as a hospital nurse. This is just the kind of family where the husband would smack his wife around in the kitchen because she criticized one of his friends, and the wife would call in sick to work until the bruises healed. But instead of