City of Dreams: Don Winslow

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Oh no, Winslow really is plowing through the LA landmarks and tabloid stereotypes of successful actresses moving to the top in LA. His Power of the Dog trilogy blew me away (almost 3,000 pages for the trilogy and I still read every word). Si os llama la atención, pero aún no habéis leído la primera parte, podéis encontrar mi reseña en el perfil. In 1988, Danny Ryan and the remnants of his crew head cross-country, having barely survived a bloody East Coast crime war.

This is the second in the epic and ambitious trilogy by Don Winslow, drawing on Virgil's Aeneid, which sees Danny Ryan, making his way to warm and sunny California, a long held dream of his, after Peter Moretti wins the Rhode Island war. When I learned Winslow would be starting a new trilogy based on the mob in 1980s Rhode Island, I was eager to get my hands on it. But, no one believes he didn’t make off with a fortune, not the FBI, not the Morettis, not even the rest of the Irish.This is a well written, gripping and compulsive read from Winslow, with its high body count, a story of tragedy, family, loss, grief, love, and Hollywood. Winslow begins the novel describing the end of an organized crime war between the Irish and Italian mobs for control of the New England market, circa 1988. There is a glimmer inside Danny Ryan suggesting he wants to become— could become—a good person if he can only survive. Danny Ryan is just not as compelling a character as Art Keller to hold the orbit of all the pieces here. Se produce un cambio total de escenario, salimos de Rhode Island para viajar por diferentes lugares de Estados Unidos, como Las Vegas o el mítico Hollywood y, aunque me han encantado estas nuevas localizaciones, he de decir que he echado un poquito de menos Rhode Island.

However, the heat is on, with the Mafia, the police, and the FBI, who either want him dead or in prison.In the end, there is nowhere for any of these guys to turn because the old life is gone and the walls are all closing in on them. In “City on Fire,” the mob war began the moment a bikini-clad goddess named Pam, girlfriend of mobster Paulie Moretti, walked out of the Atlantic onto a Providence-area beach and into the arms of the wrong man, an Irish guy. City on Fire took two feuding Providence, Rhode Island, organized crime families, the Italian family of the Morretis, and the Irish family, the Murphy-Ryans. I don't want to spoil anything but I will say he ends up dead center in the middle of a studio movie (not as an actor) and we find out there are more similarities than one might guess between the Irish mob in Providence and the LA mob behind the visual content we consume. At the film set, Danny finds himself in a replica of his old neighborhood, standing face-to-face with an actor who’s portraying him, and Diane Carson, the actress playing his late wife.

All sorts of folks are scratching each other’s backs, while others are doing the opposite, seeing who they can double cross. Central to this is the fact that two of his crew, Sean and Kevin, aka "the Altar Boys" stumble upon the fact that there is a movie being made based on the Italian and Irish mob families of Rhode Island--there's even someone playing Danny! While FIRE delved deep into the nuances of the mob world and Danny's ties to Dogtown, this novel meanders a bit, spending a lot of time in Hollywood and Las Vegas, as Danny attempts to start a new life, but cannot quite break free from his past. The progression of Ryan’s life involves numerous twists and turns, the result of which makes for a sweeping tale of family, revenge, and survival as he confronts the reality of what he hopes his life will turn out to be.

The other aspect of Winslow’s work that stands out is how his books function as a detailed alternative crime history of America from the 1990s onwards.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Luckily he has written a lot of books and they are pretty much all very good (or at least the nine I have read) but I still hope he unretires. Danny needs to reinvent himself, at heart he is a grafter, and he sees an opportunity to do just that by investing in and becoming involved in Providence, but all of this is about to be put in jeopardy. Now, the New England Mafia, the FBI and the police are out to get him — one FBI subdirector, in particular, “wants Ryan delivered like KFC.Recently widowed drug dealer Danny Ryan wants to “get the hell out of Rhode Island,” where the victorious rival Moretti crime family wants him dead. The shock of it first hit me hard reading about the attempt to describe Dianne Carson's life before she hooked up with Danny Ryan. I have been busy with work and social things, but I have spent most every alone moment for four days with this book. Danny soon learns that his mother has almost unlimited influence in all areas, and eventually warms to her as both mother and benefactor, and she protects him against all enemies which allows him to decide what he wants to make of himself, and where his future should lie.