Samaritan

Samaritan, by Richard Price. Knopf. 400 pages. $25. Samaritan is good. Very good. Pick it up, and you won't be putting it down. This book reinforces my bias that novelists had better be good writers. Richard Price is and he had me hooked to the end. Set in post-World-Trade-Center-New Jersey, Samaritan is about "good deeds" done by the well intentioned and how, too often, they go astray. Ray Mitchell, a ghetto escapee who also overcame a go-round with drugs, returns to his old neighborhood with a fat bank account and a mission to do some good in his part of this rotten, messed-up world.

At the Oasis homeless shelter in Baltimore, a man carrying a plastic bag and a backpack hesitantly enters the cavernous, nearly empty room - its brick walls newly painted pale pink. "They told me I could get my hair cut here," he says softly. Rob Cradle warmly welcomes the man to his makeshift barber's station - his clippers, scissors, towels and aftershave neatly set up on a windowsill. Once seated in the chair, the man - whose name is Michael - closes his eyes as Cradle begins to trim with the electric clippers, finishing with a splash of aftershave and a brush of the shoulders to whisk away fallen hair.

A driver involved in a commute-halting, two-car collision yesterday morning on Interstate 95 in Howard County fled the scene using the pickup truck of a good Samaritan who had stopped to help the victims, Maryland State Police said. The driver had not been found by police, though he likely suffered serious injuries when his Isuzu Trooper flipped over a guardrail and off the road, Sgt. Charles Moore said. Moore said the man might have dozed off just before the accident at 8:40 a.m. The man was speeding and driving erratically in the fast lane of northbound I-95 near Route 32 when he lost control, struck the median and smashed into a 1996 Oldsmobile also traveling north, police said.

Gary P. Haines, a 47-year-old father of three who died after he was hit by a skidding car on an icy Sykesville street yesterday morning, was described as a Good Samaritan by those who knew him. Haines was struck while he was directing motorists away from several accidents along Macbeth Way in his South Carroll neighborhood after yesterday's surprise ice storm made driving treacherous. "I was not at all surprised to hear that Gary was out there helping. He was always helping," said Mary Ellis, a Gardenia Street neighbor of the Haines family.

Baltimore businessman and political activist Raymond V. Haysbert was in critical condition last night at Good Samaritan Hospital after he collapsed about 6: 30 p.m. at a fund-raiser in Northeast Baltimore.The former chairman of Parks Sausage Co., Haysbert, who is in his late 70s, collapsed after speaking to about 200 people at the event sponsored by the North Central Democratic Coalition to raise money for Sylvia Williams' campaign for a 3rd District City Council seat."He was speaking, and he just fell backward," said Ruth Sparks, who held the event at her home in the 2500 block of Montebello Terrace.

IT'S THE LITTLE things that happen in Baltimore that constantly fascinate me.Take for example, this past Sunday night, when I emerged from BWI airport after a flight in from Chicago. Chicago was bitterly frigid. So was Baltimore.On the cab ride home I could not help but notice that there had been an unexpected snow and ice storm while I was away. As the taxi moved along Pratt Street, and northward along Calvert, I could see it was one of those tenacious January snows whose effects do not evaporate or melt quickly.

Joseph Cohen, 79, the high priest of the Samaritan sect that broke away from mainstream Judaism three millenniums ago, died Friday. The Samaritans have two communities, one in the Israeli town of Holon and one on Mount Gerizim overlooking the Palestinian-run West Bank town of Nablus.Zina Gladys Pitsor, 93, who was actor James Dean's dance instructor when he was a boy, died Friday in Marion, Ind., after a long illness.Pub Date: 2/13/98

JASON PRICE wants to say "thank you," but he does not know to whom.On Jan. 16, in the midst of the nasty weather that descended on the area, Price was taking his 3-year-old daughter, Amanda, to the doctor's office when a deer strolled onto Solomons Island Road, just north of Lothian.The front right tire of Price's Honda Civic blew out when he swerved to miss the deer.The Bambi look-alike bounded away unharmed, leaving Price on the side of the road with a useless tire and a hysterical toddler.

The ferryboat known more commonly as Smoky Joe than by its real name, the Philadelphia, steamed three times a day for 16 years from Pier 5 Light Street across the Chesapeake Bay to Love Point.By the time it was retired in 1947, Smoky Joe had managed to sail into the hearts of Baltimoreans and those on the Eastern Shore.Described as a "Dumpy double-ender," the boat earned its nickname because of the telltale trail of black coal smoke that belched from its two tall funnels (reduced to one after an 1935 refit)

JERUSALEM -- With the sound of bomb blasts ringing in his ears, Moshe Rachamim rushed from his stockroom at the city's century-old Mahane Yehuda covered market. What he saw next will stay in his mind forever -- a cloud of smoke and then a man on fire.Rachamim reached for the screaming man and tore the burning clothes from his body, helping to save his life. The 44-year-old merchant stood in the street alongside the market, shocked by the devastation before him. His horror only intensified.