BABY INSANE AND THE BUDDHA by...

BABY INSANE AND THE BUDDHA by Bob Sipchen (Bantam: $5.95; 417 pp.). Times writer Bob Sipchen traces the intertwined lives of Kevin Glass--”Baby Insane” of the Neighborhood Crips gang--and Patrick Birse, the San Diego police officer known as the Buddha because of his rotund shape and unflinching gaze. Birse’s battle to convert Glass from a felon to an informer/undercover agent reads like a good crime novel, marred only by the author’s occasional tendency to ramble. Sipchen’s often gripping account of the amoral life of theft, drugs and cold-blooded murder lead by members of the gang subculture leaves the reader uneasy, not only for the future of Southern California, but for the survival of an increasingly frayed social contract.