True grit

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/07/2022 (1347 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Helen of Troy walks out of the ocean and sets off a war between nations of men that has blood running in the streets of… well, historical spectacle and Greek mythology be darned, the streets of Providence, Rhode Island.

That’s how Danny Ryan remembers first seeing Pam on a Rhode Island beach, when he’s reflecting on dozens of violent deaths, though she wasn’t really Helen of Troy, and she wasn’t into being the property of men, no matter how powerful their egos or how large their armies. But Danny pictured her as Helen of Troy and knew her arrival was trouble.

Danny is the Al Pacino figure in this brilliant new novel from American crime author Don Winslow — he’d just like a decent life for his family, but he’s in the mob, chaos is coming, and he’s maybe the smartest guy in the room, though that bar is pretty low. Danny doesn’t buy the misty-eyed nostalgia for an Ireland they’ve never seen, he’s not into the songs about the martyrs of the Easter Uprising in 1916, but he didn’t deal the cards he’s holding.

It’s the mid-1980s, and the Irish and the Italian families have carved up Providence under the wary eye of the major league mafia families in New York and Boston.

But they’re always wary, always ready to take a chunk off the other, starting to look over their shoulders at the Blacks. The economy is bad, owning the port and the unions isn’t the goldmine it once was, and young blood doesn’t like hearing the old gangsters say no to getting into dealing heavy drugs.

Winslow is an amazing storyteller who works at a frenetic pace, yet weaves in so many personal stories along the way. They’re scummy gangsters, sure, but they have families and mortgages and illness with medical bills no amount of graft can cover.

Winslow don’t worry about grammar all that much when going gangster vernacular in the narrative, and if you ain’t good with it, he don’t care, OK?

The don has a clambake each summer to which everyone comes. Pam is there with Paulie, a wiseguy who’s one of the top Italians, but then Danny’s brother-in-law Liam — a doper who’s hot-headed but not yet a made man — touches Pam’s breast.

This is, it goes without saying, nothing to do with Pam — it’s all about Paulie and his honour, and how much of a price Liam must pay to Paulie for besmirching his property. And soon, Pam is with someone else, and Paulie wants her back…

But enough of the plot — suffice to say that things do not go well, and violence ensues.

Winslow paints a world with a distorted and quite warped code of honour governing corruption, lawlessness, silence — there are bent cops, judges on the take, businesspeople paying protection and expecting to get it, wives and mothers keeping their mouths shut when fridges and jewelry fall off the back of a truck.

Hitmen can be imported from a place such as Pawtucket, Mass., if a family in Boston says okay, or they can even take a flight from Belfast if there are some weapons going back the other way.

Through it all, Danny gets in deeper and deeper. He’s married to a Murphy, whose family runs the Irish; the Ryans were on top but Danny’s father drank his way out of power after Danny’s mother — no, no more about Danny’s mother, but you’ll love her.

Look, City on Fire is not a happy tale. It’s really violent, these are awful men who are racists and murderers and nasty pieces of work. But Don Winslow is quite the genius in telling their stories.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin was in Providence one time — fortunately, he didn’t go near the docks, partake in backroom card games or mess with the honour of any made men.