Payback - Hardcover

Kelly, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517277573 ISBN 13: 9780517277577

Publisher: Random House Value Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

As the wild building boom of the 1980s galvanizes the construction rackets, both the Mafia and the feds stake out territory in New York City's eternally explosive Hell's Kitchen, longtime turf of the Irish mob.

At the center of the story: two Irish brothers, Paddy and Billy Adare.  One is an enforcer for the mob.  The other, about to enter law school, works as a sandhog in the tunnels below Manhattan.  Important to each other since childhood, they are caught in a crossfire of greed and savage violence that puts their loyalties -- to family, neighborhood, and each other -- to a brutal test.

About this title

Review

This is a richly textured, impressive first thriller with links to everything from Upton Sinclair's pioneering exposes of brutal working conditions to Mario Puzo's family- oriented crime novels. Set in the 1980s building boom in New York City, it centers on two brothers: Paddy Adare, a former boxer who works for the Irish mobs that control the construction business in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, and his younger brother, Billy, who is trying to pay for law school by digging foundations for the new buildings. It's Italian gangsters fighting Irish ones, workers battling bosses, and brother against brother in a meaty stew of meaningful action.

From the Publisher

"Tom Kelly proves he knows New York like his own skin. He might laugh if you called him a poet but that he is. His prose is hard and heartbreaking and the talk of his characters will echo a long time. It is the talk of men and women who have to keep face and if there is love they'll utter it with an obscenity. Payback is Tom Kelly's New York, a great book to read more than once."
-- Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0517277573
• ISBN 13: 9780517277577
• Binding: Hardcover