Review: 'City on Fire'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

City on Fire
By Don Winslow
Crime Fiction
William Morrow

Families, gangs, armies are all complex organisms that exist as an entity in addition to being a group of individuals. The dynamics between the two types of existence -- as individuals and as a group -- drive the action in Don Winslow's City on Fire, a remarkable new novel that has echoes of Greek tragedy.

The novel opens with the annual clambake Pasco Ferri holds at his Rhode Island beach house. Danny Ryan, loyal soldier to the Murphys, is content to celebrate the end of another summer with the Irish and Italian families that are loyal to Ferri. Through his eyes, the reader is introduced to the people around him, the ways they spend their holiday days and nights, the love he has for his wife, Terri, who is a Murphy daughter. Danny once fished on the ocean to stay away from the traditional jobs on the docks and running certain errands for the Murphys, but that all changed when he got married. And although he's a hard worker and loyal soldier, as well as a son-in-law, he has no place at the table in back of John Murphy's Irish bar. But that's the kind of thing one shakes off when it comes to family and friends.

When Danny and Terri spot a beautiful young woman arrive on the beach, they see things will never be the same. She is a Helen of Troy figure, coming in on the arm of one of the Italian crew. Pam draws everyone's eyes, but none more intently than those of Liam. He's the youngest Murphy son, the one least capable of doing his duty, and the one everyone makes excuses for. Until he insults Pam, and, like Troy and Sparta, the peace is broken. And, like the Trojan War, the toll will be heavy.

The action is twisty and fast-paced in this remarkable story. Danny anchors it, acting as a major player whose fate is not what he chose, but what he is capable of rising to fulfill. He also is a sort of Greek chorus that notices who does what, and why, and what the ramifications may well be. Some events are foreshadowed well in advance while others may well surprise a reader. But they all make sense within the frame of the story.

City on Fire is violent and profane in its raw depiction of what happens when two mob families go into an all-out war. The juxtaposition between what individuals choose to do and the way the families function shows how easily wrong choices can be made, and the deadly consequences that follow. There are echoes of other mob stories, but this stands on its own. Winslow has written about cartels and crime families in his fiction before, and his experience in being able to tell these stories in a compelling manner brings a good fit to the framework of classic tragedy. As the first in Winslow's trilogy that marks his retirement from writing to work as an anti-fascist media advocate full-time, City on Fire is an engrossing send-off.