Payback

It's the go-go real estate boom of the 1980s: new buildings are sprouting up all over New York City and money is falling like rain--but who will control the flow? In the neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side, the Irish mob has always ruled the construction rackets, but there's a turf war brewing. Now the Mafia wants a piece of the action, and to make matters worse, the feds are sniffing around looking for trouble. Set in dusty Ninth Avenue gin mills and amidst the bellow and clank of construction sites, Kelly's sprawling debut novel is a macho tour de force centering on the Adare brothers, Paddy, a former boxer turned mob enforcer, and his kid brother, Billy, a college graduate trying to earn money for law school as a sandhog digging tunnels, which one co-worker calls ""the job with the highest death rate in America."" The vividly realistic depictions of the sandhogs' brutal working conditions 80 stories underground and the grim consequences of labor strife bring to mind Zola's Germinal; the scenes of gruesome mob violence are choreographed with cinematic intensity. Chapter by chapter, the story reaches inside the minds of all the story's key figures, including those of a psychotic hit man who's a neat freak, a ruthless crime boss, a tenderhearted Mafia capo and a hardworking, pregnant FBI agent. Although Kelly relies a little too heavily on flashbacks for character development, his dialogue rings true and his characters emerge as convincing individuals battling a whirlwind of forces beyond their control. (Feb.)