The modern mob is a shell of its former existence. La Cosa Nostra is now La Cosa Freak Show. Used to be if a wiseguy got convicted, he did his time in silence. Now, they all want to cut a deal and stay out of prison. Dominick Farase has dirt on the Cirelli family and manages to work a deal to get into WitSec that places him on an island just off the coast of New Hampshire.
NYPD organized crime cop Quinlan King travels to New England with his artsy wife to scope out the place where she will do some residential art course, stumbles across Farase and snaps a few shots on his phone. First stop when he returns? Why, retired family capo Gasper Cirelli, of course. The word gets passed to the son, Frank and the wheels are set in motion for a hit reaching out to James ‘Doc’ Adamo to get it done.
Red-haired ‘Mick’ Tommy Dalton chose his own path and knows what probably awaits him. He is not likely to die in bed of old age. He married a stripper, fathered 3 daughters, then was divorced by his wife when she finally realized that Tommy was a bit more than just a thief. Being of Irish descent, he was unable to become a made man within any NY crime family so he went freelance specializing in contract killing. Pretty good at it and well paid to boot.
But right now, Tommy has bigger problems on his hands. Seems his ex decided that his oldest daughter (Alysha, NYU Pre-Vet student) deserves to know just who her father really is by telling her that Tommy is a murderer. The ex is pissed off because her newest man, a lawyer with political aspirations, found out Tommy wasn’t on the up and up and dumped her because Tommy’s history would kill any chance at holding public office; the press finds out everything.
‘Doc’ Adamo and Tommy are longtime friends and Doc acts as the middle man between the Cirelli family and Tommy. The hit goes down. Piece of cake.
But La Cosa Freak Show these days is more about CYA than pure retribution so the Cirelli’s have the bright idea that all loose ends need to be tied up. Hits are ordered on Doc, Tommy, Detective King, and lord knows who else.
Not all goes as planned. Doc survives the attack and manages to take out one of the hitters. A guy was tasked with following and killing Tommy on the island; bad idea. The FBI gets involved (they don’t like protected witnesses getting whacked), lower level wiseguys hoping to move up don’t have quite the talent of the old days. And going after Alysha in order to leverage Tommy wasn’t a bright move.
Dalton is a character from a short story Stella wrote for one of the terrific series of ‘Noir’ books, this one was Baltimore Noir (where I first stumbled across Stella). I once read where Stella said Tommy was one of his favorite characters and really wanted to pen a book with Tommy as the central character.
Holy crap. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Why the hell isn’t Stella on every mystery lover’s must-read list. All those supermarket bestsellers are all about marketing, certainly not about story, characters, dialogue, tone, setting, and (fictional) reality. This taut, tightly presented story of misplaced loyalties and retribution is nicely tied up in a fast-paced tale that, once you get used to the rhythm of the dialogue, just begs you to turn the next page.
To me, the best crime and noir novels absolutely require dialogue that both leaps off the page and drills under your fingernails. Dashiell Hammett, George V. Higgins, George Pelacanos come to mind. Higgins was a Boston lawyer in the DA’s office so he saw the underbelly of crime up close. Pelacanos (one of the original writers for The Wire) writes about DC crime and gets his feel for the voice of the street by volunteering with the DC Metro Juvenile division counseling kids to get out of the life. Stella grew up in the neighborhood and knows of many of the people who are/were the source material for the movie Goodfellas. And his cover blurb says that was ‘a former window washer, word processor, and knockaround guy’ (apply your own definition). While the plotline may be a figment of Stella’s imagination, the interaction between and amongst the characters is the absolutely the real deal.
One hallmark of Stella’s books is a mostly innocent good guy caught in the middle who must find a way out. Tommy Red doesn’t really have that ‘good guy’ who now has to scramble. But true to form, Stella skillfully makes a contract killer into a sympathetic figure worthy of us pulling for. Let’s hope we haven’t heard the last of Tommy Dalton.
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