Many of you have seen Mel Gibson’s movie Payback, which I thought was very good in a nasty, revenge sort of way. Especially the scenes with the dominatrix. That movie was based on Thomas Kelly’s first novel; The Rackets is his second.
This story lifts much from Kelly’s own life. Our hero, Jimmy Dolan, starts out the novel as a high-level assistant to a New York City mayor. He’s Irish, grew up in Inwood, the northernmost section of Manhattan, the son of a union rebel, and paid his way through school working construction. All also true of the author. So I think we can accept the emotions as authentic, which is good because this book is all about emotions.
Dolan begins his new journey when he fails to keep his emotions in check and instead decks a Teamster local president during a reception at Gracie Mansion, in front of the mayor. The union leader, Keefe, who is of course dirtier than a pig after a rainstorm, is also a major campaign contributor. Not to mention the man who keeps beating Dolan’s father in fixed union elections. So, like that, our boy is out on his keister. He’s been living with a high society female, who we never really meet, and she decides his unemployed ass no longer suits her apartment. So he’s really out.
Jimmy turns to his father, who’s in the midst of a third attempt to dethrone Keefe, and his childhood home. But Keefe isn’t just politically connected, he’s also connected by marriage to Tommy Magic, a Mafia don, and this don is tired of ‘doing things the right way’. The Magic Man decides he’s not willing to lose his main cash cow and pulls the trigger on Dolan’s old man. The law enforcement side of the government, natch, is mixed up in all of this too and makes for further complications. Jimmy has to find his way safely through this landmine, honor his father, and find time to fall back in love with his childhood girlfriend (a tall, blonde, gorgeous cop).
Once the father is killed, Kelly really picks up the story’s pace. Events careen around corners, figuratively and literally, connections are made only to twist apart, family saves and family kills. While the major aspect of the ending is not really surprising, the way we get there and a lot of the details are done quite well. If there are only seven true basic plots, this book brings in most of them.
And although the hero is already 29 years old, he still hasn’t really grown up. But by the end of the story he has, forced to confront the contradiction between where he comes from and where he wants to go. As one (much more thorough) review says, perhaps this novel also helped the author resolve this contradiction as well.
Oddly, ABC hopes to adapt this novel into a television series starring Billy Baldwin as Dolan, to be directed by Sidney Pollack. Hard to tell until they actually put something on the tube, if they actually put something on the tube, but seems like this will put Dolan back into his job with the Mayor, as if the events of this novel never happened. Except he’ll hopefully get the cop for a girlfriend and not the stuck up bitch.
Recommended
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