Mobtown

New York Times Book Review

His writing is crisp, straight out of film noir . . . adrenaline in words.

George P. Pelecanos

Mobtown is a brilliant recreation . . . fueled by muscle and juice.

People Magazine

It's a book you can start and finish by the same fireplace log.

Publishers Weekly

Set in 1959 Rochester, N.Y., this excursion into noir from the author of Line of Sight owes much to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, though it captures little of their panache. As divorced ex-cop-turned-PI Dwight "Ike" Van Savage (an attempt to evoke both Eisenhower and Doc Savage?) trails philandering Eddie Gill, a husband and father of four involved with a 16-year-old girl, Ike's thoughts turn to his own 10-year-old daughter: "I didn't want to think of her growing up in a world of Eddie Gills." True to the classic tradition, Ike's soon in over his head: a young woman named Sandy Mink turns up in the morgue with her throat cut; Gill is the prime suspect because Sandy knew he was running guns for local mafioso Joe Petrone. But that's just the beginning. Many dead bodies later, Ike confronts the killer in a pyrotechnic finish, yet the mystery itself, with all its attendant twists and sanguinary episodes, doesn't satisfy as it should. An unwelcome sense of vu hangs over the proceedings, while the period details, despite numerous, desultory topical references (What My Line?, The Seven Year Itch, the Patterson-Johansson heavyweight fight, George "Superman" Reeves's suicide), fail to convince. In addition, the plot is so diffuse that things occasionally come unglued, and decent tough-guy Ike remains no more than a crude sketch. Kelly's medium-boiled style has been likened to James M. Cain's hard-hitting prose, but it's clear, based on this outing, that he's not yet in that league. (Jan. 9) Forecast: With plugs from such big names as Donald Westlake, Joe Gores and George P. Pelecanos, as well as the movie release late in 2001 of Protection, for which Kelly wrote the screenplay from anearlier novel, Mobtown may well garner plenty of publicity and sales. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Here, Kelly (Line of Sight) manages once more to breathe new and wonderfully sleazy life into the hard-boiled mystery format. The year is the politically incorrect 1959, and the unlikely place is Rochester, NY. Private detective Ike Van Savage's business is booming. He's on a domestic case, shadowing a married man who's squiring a 16-year-old around town, and following a prominent mobster whose wife reports that he is trying to kill her. Before Ike can make much progress on either case, he is fired by both of his employers. Still, the aftermath of the investigations that he had only just begun manages to be explosive enough to blow away (both literally and figuratively) the facade of easy respectability behind which Rochester has retired. While the book doesn't break any new ground, its mastery of the hard-boiled mix of marshmallow heart and existential angst is exact, right down to similes that stand out "like a bride in a slaughterhouse." Recommended wherever the genre is in demand; fans won't be disappointed. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It's 1959, and Rochester ("Mobtown") is seedy, greedy, unabashedly corrupt. A connected operator named Joe Petrone runs it-the gambling, the vice, the widespread extortion-and "everything about it stinks," says Ike Van Savage, once a cop, now a p.i. and the rare citizen a Petrone stare won't scare half to death. What makes Ike different? Asked that kind of question, he'll usually shrug and answer, mildly enough, that he never planned on dying in bed. But even a cool cat like Ike might have backed off Mrs. Eddie Gill's "matrimonial job" if he'd known where it would lead. It seems simple: Follow the errant husband, take the compromising photos of him and the bimbo, collect some easy money. Who could have guessed all roads would lead to the racket king's door, though not without side trips involving several gorgeous but dubious females (Mrs. Petrone among them), a variety of hidden agendas, and more ill-intentioned hot lead than Ike's seen since Korea. Ike hangs in, of course, suffering beatings, knifings, double-crossings, and the bitter disappointment of love gone wrong. But then, after a furious, action-packed climax, he manages to sort out who did what to whom and explain it to the reader, more or less persuasively.