City on Fire

“… is everything going to fall apart over a piece of ass?”

‘Everything’ being the truce between the Irish and Italian mobs that control New England. But, “Young men are stupid and their balls are too full.” Liam Murphy, little brother on the Irish side, being the stupidest of them all.

“It started with a sunny day on the beach, he thinks, and ended up with you throwing cold dirt on your best friend’s coffin.”

I really enjoyed this book! Great characters and great action! The Italian and the Irish crews slugging it out in Providence! My only sadness is that I have to wait for the next one! Please hurry Mr. Winslow!

“Fish that don’t open their mouths don’t get caught.” Words to live by.

I've been a fan of Don Winslow ever since, intrigued by the title, I picked a paperback of [California Fire and Life] off a library-sale table a couple of decades ago. [City on Fire] isn't his best work, but even an average outing with Winslow is an enormously entertaining roller-coaster ride. The plot whizzes along, the characters are more complex and vividly drawn than a lesser writer would bother to make them, and the setting -- Rhode Island in in the mid-80s, a time and a place I experienced first-hand -- is evoked with pitch-perfect accuracy. Winslow is better known for his novels about California and the desert Southwest, but he made me feel the fog rolling in off Narragansett Bay all over again, as if it were yesterday rather show more than 40 years ago.

The plot -- a riff on the origins of the Trojan War, played out among the rival Irish and Italian mobs in mid-eighties Providence -- is standard crime-fiction stuff. There are ethnic tensions, generational conflicts, and complicated family loyalties. The working-class social milieu is also familiar. You can feel Winslow, on both fronts, working what's usually Dennis Lehane's corner. In [City on Fire], though, Winslow takes a different path through the material than either Lehane or (for that matter) Mario Puzo. His hero, Danny Ryan, is anything but a young man with a pedigree, destined for great things. He's a modestly talented, modestly accomplished, modestly ambitious gangster who longs for more respect and responsibility than he gets from those he serves.

When a slight at an end-of-summer clambake spirals into open warfare between rival ethnic mobs, Danny gets a far bigger shot than he ever dreamed of: a chance to establish himself as a great leader or die in the process. Winslow makes it clear, however, that Danny isn't a Rhode Island version of Joe Coughlin, let alone Michael Corleone. He alternates between brilliant improvisations and disastrous miscalculations, sometimes supported by those closest to him and other times undermined by them for their own purposes. The book -- first in a trilogy -- ends with him achieving one of his dearest wishes, but at a terrible cost. Danny is, throughout the story, plausibly and refreshingly imperfect.

[City on Fire] is a crime story, not an extended contemplation of the human condition, but it has more going on, I think, than many reviewers on LibraryThing have given it credit for. "Loyalty" and "respect" are old, old tropes in crime stories, but Winslow finds interesting things to do with them, using them in more complicated ways than he seems to be doing at first. Danny's complicated family life, particularly his relationships with his estranged mother and quasi-adopted parents, also turn out to be more intriguing than it appears at first glance.

One of the running themes of the story is how the weight of history (personal, family, community) and the push and pull of old obligations (real or imagined) steers our lives in directions other than the ones we might choose for ourselves, given the chance. In this, as in his evocation of the Narragansett Bay fog, Winslow gets the ineffable nature of the thing perfectly right. show less

Lately I am handing out 5-star reviews like they are M & Ms. I know it stretches credulity to believe that I am figuratively rolling around in excellence so much of the time, but what can I say, I have been getting lucky on the regular (alas strictly with respect to literary satiation.)

I love Don Winslow, even when he is bad he is good, but there is no bad here. As has been mentioned by many before me this is a modern riff on the Trojan Wars set amongst the crime families of Providence. The Italians and Irish are all enjoying the kumbaya born of long established boundaries. It is a love fest until a beautiful woman rises from the water and sets off the war. When I first started reading this I thought Winslow had fallen prey to the show more boring old male gaze, but I forgave him because noir sort of requires that. But then Don surprised me. It is clear from the first moment that this is all about the guys who are felled in part by their dehumanization of women as being there for their needs. They are in fact felled by their male gaze not by the femme fatale. Way to go Mr. Winslow!

This book is brutal and funny and sad and angry and very human. Danny is a first rate antihero and all the others around him are complicated and fascinating. It is about a mob war so it is not a spoiler to say not everyone gets out alive and its also not a spoiler to say that there are people left with things to avenge. I am already looking forward to the next in this series.

I listened to this one, and the audio read by Ari Flakios is excellent. show less

I can imagine a reader with no familiarity with Homer and Virgil finding this a twisty and fresh take on the mob thriller--in one of the last places we haven't seen them done over and over again. Sadly, I'm not that reader. Once one is familiar with the events of Homer's Iliad and the subsequent tales of Aeneas, there is nothing surprising about anything that takes place here. All the thrills and unexpected are entirely absent. Being rewarded for being well read is not enough to ultimately save this derivative mobster tale.

The advantage of waiting so long to start the Danny Ryan trilogy by Don Winslow is that all three books have been published. I genuinely enjoyed the first book, City on Fire. I found immense pleasure in the fictional world of the Italian and Irish crime families. This is exactly the kind of story I’ve come to expect from Winslow.

City on Fire is a crime saga set in 1980s Providence, Rhode Island. It follows two rival crime families—the Irish and the Italians—who have maintained an uneasy peace while dividing control over New England’s underworld. However, this fragile truce is shattered when a beautiful woman sparks conflict between the two sides, igniting a brutal, all-out war filled with violence, betrayal, and shifting show more alliances. At the center of this chaos is Danny Ryan, a working-class longshoreman and low-level associate in the Irish mob. As loyalties are tested and the body count rises, Danny gets drawn deeper into the turmoil.

I understand that Winslow drew inspiration from Homer’s Iliad, with echoes of Helen of Troy. Unfortunately, I haven’t read that book, so I can’t fully appreciate the comparison. Regardless, I was hooked on this book from start to finish. Given the story’s focus on different crime families, there are many characters. Initially, I thought I’d be overwhelmed trying to differentiate everyone, but I was able to learn their names and roles quite easily. The story is filled with suspenseful action and brutal mafia violence, making it flow very quickly. Each chapter ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, so it was challenging to take reading breaks. The relationships between Danny and his wife, in-laws, and mother were masterfully handled. This story strikes a nice balance between the power struggle in the criminal world and the meaningful relationships that coexist.

I purchased my signed first edition of City on Fire from The Poisoned Pen, an independent bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I’ve added the next book in the series, City of Dreams, to my reading list so I can immerse myself in Danny Ryan’s world sooner rather than later. I prefer to read other books between serials, rather than reading them consecutively. I suppose it’s because I relish a bit of suspense and am willing to postpone gratification in discovering Danny Ryan’s next move. On the downside, I tend to allow more time than intended to pass before diving back into a series. To address this, I’m keeping a list of books I want to read next. Let’s see how well I stick to this goal.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog show less

It starts with a woman. In Dogtown for years the two alternating faction. Irish and Italian have divided their terror tried in a way that was mutually beneficial for both. Until....? Now all bets are off revenge must be add and a mob war ensues.

I don't read many books that cover mobs. Usually not my thing but I'd heard many good things about this book and despite the violence it was a good story. A modern telling of Helen of Troy, quite cleverly done. Not many likable characters but there are a few that I found in a situation that they didn't seek, and how they reacted, intriguing.

I'm not sure what to do with this one. I'm tempted to give it 2 stars and chuck it. But I rarely finish a book that only warrants two stars, and I tore through this one. There really isn't any "story" here...it's just the Irish and Italian rival mobsters dealing and double-crossing each other over and over again in Providence, RI, in the 1980s. There's the whole "do we or don't we deal drugs" issue, there's some lamenting the loss of old school "ethics"--we don't go after men's families, don't shoot cops, honor our promises, etc.; there's the guy who wants out, and thinks he has a plan (this, of course, being the main plot line, such as it is.) AND, there are attempts to make this world epic with allusions to Greek tragedy. Sorry, but show more this world can't even aspire to early 20th century Sicilian tragedy. It's just grim and bullet riddled. Too many deaths, not enough narrative thread. (aLSo...what's with the omniscient narrator using bad grammar when showing us things from Danny's POV? OK, maybe, if it was consistent, but it seemed to interrupt the flow something fierce without adding anything.) I realize this is the first book in a trilogy, and to some extent it's setting the stage for future drama, but I'm not much interested in how Act Two plays out. Two and a half reluctant stars, I guess. show less