Fire and Vice

Those of us whose mystery tastes were bred and buttered by Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, John D. McDonald, Lawrence Block, and Ross Macdonald will be pleased to hear that Ira Berkowitz, their legitimate child, has a fine new Jackson Steeg book out, a handsome trade paperback called Sinners’ Ball (Three Rivers Press). After surviving, in 2008’s Old Flame, a bomb blast at a saloon called Feeney’s (imagine all of Matt Scudder’s favorite hangouts rolled into one), Steeg, an ex-New York homicide cop who has been pensioned off because of a problem with Johnny Walker Black Label and a missing lung, can still find the strength to battle bad guys, even if he has to sit down and breathe hard afterwards.

Steeg’s biggest problem is his brother, Dave, an amoral mobster who lost a hand in the aforementioned blast, brought on by his kidnapping of the son of a ruthless Israeli gangster who was trying to muscle in on his territory. Now Dave is in even deeper trouble: After a warehouse he owns is consumed by flames that kill three squatters and two firefighters, an additional half-dozen bodies, all of them sexually molested and left in packing crates, are found in the basement. Dave’s the too-obvious target for an indictment. And Steeg’s efforts to identify the real perpetrator have him stepping on the wrong toes and ducking bullets.

Berkowitz, a New York advertising executive turned author, is the best thing to happen to tough American crime fiction since Jim Fusilli (Hard, Hard City, Tribeca Blues), who seems to be writing for younger audiences these days. If a blast from the past is what you crave to get you through the holidays, then Sinners’ Ball is this year’s affair to remember.