Great Reads for Great Readers

 

City on Fire, by Don Winslow.

 

            

Homer's classic‘The Iliad’ gets a 20^th century makeover here by the great Don Winslow in the first book of a new trilogy.  And what a trilogy it will be -  if he gets it right - as he transfers the Grecian siege of ancient Troy to avenge Spartan king Menelaus for the abduction of his breathtakingly beautiful wife Helen by Trojan prince Paris, to the modern setting of Rhode Island, U.S.A.

            August, 1986. A summer clambake is being held by the local Italian mob boss.  His Irish counterparts who run the docks and the unions also attend, for the two sides have had a peaceful co-existence for many years, dividing the various rackets equitably between them – you could almost say they were good friends until …..

            “Danny Ryan watches the woman come out of the water like a vision emerging from his dreams of the sea.

            Except she’s real and she’s going to be trouble.

            Women that beautiful usually are.

            Danny knows that;  what he doesn’t know is how much trouble she’s going to be.  If he knew that, knew everything that was going to happen, he might have walked into the water and held her head under until she stopped moving.

            But he doesn’t know that.”

            Winslow’s Danny Ryan is a minor captain in the Irish gang led by John Murphy, and through his eyes we see the disintegration of trust and vengeful territorial incursions that start after Murphy’s son Liam makes a pass (oops!) at Pam, gorgeous new girlfriend of Italian mobster Sal Antonucci.  Liam earns a huge beating for his attempts to touch the untouchable, so severe that he nearly dies in hospital, BUT!  The beauteous Pam visits him to apologise for causing him to come within an inch of losing his life – and the Gods must have laughed themselves to a standstill at their devious manipulation of events, for she ends up forsaking the brutal Sal and retiring to a safe house with Liam when he’s well enough to leave hospital.

            The new hostilities soon degenerate into outright war, with all its attendant tragedy:  Murphy’s gang is on a hiding to nothing through lack of numbers, including the loss of his son Pat, Danny’s best friend, in a brutal and bloody ambush.  It’s time for Danny to decide his own fate, especially as his wife is dying and he has a young son to care for. It’s time to desert the sinking ship.

            Everyone speaks like a 1940’s Private Eye in this novel, which I thought was overkill;  some of the dialogue sounds almost like parody but as always, Mr Winslow has created sufficiently compelling new characters and situations out of the ancient verses (the new version of the Trojan Horse is particularly convincing), that his story can only improve.  And there was even an excerpt from Book Two at the end.  A taste of better things to come?  FOUR STARS.