Join Book Club: Delivered to your inbox every Friday, a selection of publishing news, literary observations, poetry recommendations and more from Book World writer Ron Charles. Our mournful omniscient narrator comments: But, after the shooting stops and the loot is packed away in the getaway car, Danny hesitates to execute Abbarca’s men who are zip-tied on the floor. If they successfully storm a heavily fortified desert safe house where Popeye Abbarca’s cartel stashes millions in drug money, the Feds will allow Danny and his crew to disappear into their new lives. In one of the novel’s most harrowing scenes, Danny and his crew (including two mob soldiers nicknamed the “Altar Boys,” because they coyly boast that they serve their victims “Last Communion”) agree to an “everything-will-be-forgiven” deal with the Drug Enforcement Administration. While he’s no pushover, Danny still avoids unnecessary bloodshed. Danny married into the Irish mob he started out as a dockworker, a mostly decent working stiff. In Virgilian terms, Danny is Aeneas, a guy who’s a little too morally scrupulous for his own good. “City of Dreams,” which begins in 1988, two years after the events of the earlier novel, charts Danny Ryan’s desperate attempt to say goodbye to all the killing and start a new life out West.
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