Book Review: Don Winslow - City On Fire

While it was sad to hear that Don Winslow is retiring from writing to concentrate on his political campaigning - "It's time to do something else," his statement read - the good news is that the other two books that will form a trilogy with City On Fire are already written. I say good news because City On Fire is a cast-iron cracker.

There’s an uneasy peace in Providence, R.I. in 1986. The Irish gang controls the docks but that's slim pickings compared to the gambling, strip clubs, protection and everything else that the Italians control throughout the rest of the city, and they can call on help from New York when it’s needed. John Murphy runs the Irish and has done since he took over from Marty Ryan, who hit the bottle after his wife left. Marty’s son, Danny, is also Murphy’s son-in-law. Murphy wasn't exactly delighted at the prospect of a Ryan joining the family but his wife Catherine puts her foot down. Danny had tried to get away from the life, he had dreams of becoming a sword fisherman, but Dogtown - and his love for Murphy's daughter Terri - dragged him back.

The fuse is lit when Liam, the youngest of the Murphys, crosses the line with Pam, Paulie Moretti’s new girl, at boss man Pasco Ferri's clambake. Things start to fall apart. Pasco, who runs all of southern New England, is stepping back, so the Moretti brothers take the liberty of going after Liam. As reluctant as he might be to do so, Danny may have to step up to protect those around him.

Readers of The Cartel Trilogy or the marvellous collection of shorts, Broken, will eat up this brilliant novel, which bodes very well indeed for parts two and three. Characters like Pasco - a bad man who takes what he wants from his own niece - looking for the quiet life, the hopeless disaster Liam, the broken down Marty Ryan surviving on Lucky Strikes, Bushmills and lottery tickets, and the contrite Pam are all faultlessly drawn. There's a whole subplot around Danny's take-no-shit-from-anyone mother Madeline McKay, detailing her life before and after Vegas and how she crossed paths with Danny's father, which would have made a worthwhile novel on its own. Various set pieces, from Pasco's party to the Italians visiting Tim's Spindrift Bar to the use of outside help from the old country to the fate of a hustler-for-hire are all perfectly executed, if you'll excuse the pun, and the confluence of events that form the ending is near perfect.

All these things should sound familiar to you from a hundred gangster movies but Winslow is far too accomplished a writer to slip into cliché. He appropriately quotes from Virgil and Homer in his section epigraphs because City on Fire is impressively epic with razor sharp dialogue puts you right there in the bars and on the streets and a plot that's as tight as a rusted nut.