Thursday Reviews: Worst Enemies by Dana King

WORST ENEMIES

Dana King

It starts with a couple of scenes reminiscent of Strangers on a Train. Stock broker Tom Widmer is asked by another broker, Marty Croupcho, to kill his wife. They discussed killing each other’s spouses for months, but Widmer always thought it was a joke. Croupcho says he’s not kidding. His wife is filing for divorce that day. So Widmer does it, trying to make it look like a burglary gone bad. Too bad he’s no killer. He even leaves DNA evidence in the toilet when he throws up from nerves. Open and shut case. Right?

Well, no. Widmer is a slam dunk for Detective Ben Dougherty, “Doc” to his friends, of the Penns River Police Department. Penns River is suburb of Pittsburgh struggling to find its identity in a post-industrial world. Widmer himself is feeling age creeping up on him. He’s young enough to still have options but old enough to notice he’s alone. His partner is a retired Pittsburgh cop named Grabek, who’s good but does the least amount of work possible to get the job done. What makes this case odd is a second murder in an abandoned row house. The man is a known operator for what’s left of Pittsburgh’s mafia, but he also turns out to be “Marty Croupcho,” and not the Marty Croupcho who turned up at Widmer’s arraignment.

Worst Enemies is a very working class novel. There are no real power brokers in this one, except maybe a local mob boss who spends as much time running his car dealership as he does the remains of his criminal empire. Penns River is populated by a motley collection of Irish, Slavic, Italian, and black characters who used to make the steel and the cars and the appliances America buys. It’s not the depressed wasteland of the 1980′s and 90′s, but the town needs an identity it can’t seem to find.

There’s a certain small town vibe to King’s writing. Worst Enemies takes place closer to an urban center than Stephen King’s fictional Maine towns, but there’s a sense of history there, both personal and shared, that builds the connection with the reader. When a writer has you seeing the places where you yourself grew up as the story unfolds, often without realizing it, he’s done his job.

And done it well.

Thursday Reviews: Wild Bill by Dana King, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Wild Bill

Dana King

Will Hickox is an FBI agent. He’s good. When he’s Wild Bill, he’s lucky. The FBI doesn’t like lucky. It makes them look bad. For years, he has worked Operation Fallout, the latest attempt to bring down Chicago’s infamous Outfit. Things are coming to a head when boss Giani Bevilacqua drops dead (in the book’s opening scene, no less). Suddenly, there’s a war on for leadership. Junior Bevilacqua believes he’s inherited The Outfit. Frank Ferrarro thinks he’s earned it. Junior is a Scarface wannabe more interested in lording his position over everyone than making money. Ferrarro is a business man, and even though it’s illegal, The Outfit is a business.

Hickox thinks he can get the long sought-after indictment before a prissy assistant US Attorney shuts the operation down. He starts stringing Ferrarro along. However, complicating things are Mitch Klimak, a Chicago cop with a chip on his shoulder, and Hickox’ feeling that maybe things would be better if Junior went down before anyone sees a grand jury. It doesn’t help that Klimak is the husband of Hickox’ lover Mad.

King paints a picture of the war on organized crime for what it is. It’s a game with give and take between both sides. Like The Wire, not all the criminals are bad guys. Not all the cops are good guys.

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow

Of all the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton is an enigma. The bastard son of a disgraced Scottish nobleman, Hamilton grew up in The Bahamas learning the value of a pound. Never having any money, he learned its value very quickly. A job with a shipping firm earned him a slot at New York’s Kings College (now Columbia University). There, Hamilton fell in with the burgeoning patriot movement. It soon became his mission to liberate his adopted country from British rule.

As the Revolution erupted, Hamilton came to the attention of George Washington. Soon, he became indispensable to Washington, often writing his orders and drafting his letters. Many of Washington’s writings are actually Hamilton’s work. Hamilton’s position as Washington’s chief aide led to his appointment to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and as Washington’s Treasury Secretary during his first term as president.

Hamilton was hard-working, loyal to Washington without being blindly so, and not shy about taking charge if he thought something needed done. He was a dutiful husband who nonetheless found himself involved in America’s first high-profile sex scandal. His policies toward the nation’s banking system catapulted him to the head of the early Federalist Party and put him at war with Thomas Jefferson and former ally James Madison. Unfortunately for the Federalists, Hamilton also waged a personal war against Washington’s successor, John Adams. When Hamilton’s machinations cost Adams the presidency, it also wrecked Hamilton’s influence.

In his final days, however, the tables were turned. Hamilton, now a New York lawyer, had become something of an elder statesman. When he called out Aaron Burr for his role in a failed development project in New Jersey, Burr, ever the hot head, challenged Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton detested dueling and planned to waste his shot. Burr didn’t pick up on this and shot Hamilton dead, somehow dodging two murder indictments.

Hamilton was a contradiction. A man of poor origins entrusted with the nation’s treasury. A faithful husband whose one dalliance became the first political sex scandal in America. A leader of the Federalist Party who became the agent of its ultimate destruction.