Bruce DeSilva - Reviews

“A Masterpiece of Irreverence and Street Savvy”
– Publisher’s Weekly

“The serial torching of Mount Hope, a deteriorating Providence, R.I., neighborhood, sparks an investigative reporter's mission to smoke out the firebug in DeSilva's promising debut. Journalist Liam Mulligan, a Mount Hope native, smells arson in the ashes of tenement fires that have claimed the lives of several friends. The deeper he digs into suspicious circumstances surrounding the blazes, though, the more resistance he meets from police, politicians, landlords, and lawyers. Soon, Mulligan himself is fingered for the fires by the same sleazy authorities he's investigating. Smart-ass Mulligan is a masterpiece of irreverence and street savvy, and DeSilva does a fine job of evoking the seamy side of his beat through the strippers, barkeeps, bookies, and hoodlums who are his confidantes and companions. They all contribute to the well-wrought noirish atmosphere that supports this crime novel's dark denouement. A twist in the tale will keep readers turning the pages until the bitter end.”

  


 
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Bruce DeSilva, award winning writer & editor, author of Rogue IslandBruce DeSilva, award winning writer & editor, author of Rogue Island

More reviews below.

 
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 4

“A Blistering Debut”
– Kirkus Reviews

The smallest state bursts with crime, corruption, wisecracks and neo-noir atmosphere in DeSilva’s blistering debut. Someone’s set seven fires in the Mount Hope section of Providence. Arson for profit is all too common in the city’s history, but these buildings were owned by different people and insured by different companies. So Ernie Polecki, indolent Chief Arson Investigator, and his incompetent assistant Roselli, the mayor’s cousin, assume that they’re the work of a firebug. So do the DiMaggios, the vigilante crew who patrol the nighttime streets with baseball bats. But not seen-it-all reporter Liam Mulligan. His festering ulcer, estrangement from his harpy wife Dorcas and romance with his young Princeton-trained colleague Veronica Tang, who won’t have sex with him till he gets tested for HIV, haven’t absorbed all his energy. Shrugging off the insistence of city editor Ed Lomax that he file a story on a dog who ran across the country from Oregon to rejoin his relocated owners (a hilarious episode that shows just how desperate his professional situation is), Mulligan homes in on the developing story. - (cont.)
 
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His interest is fueled by the number of interested parties he just happens to be close to—from his prom date Rosella Morelli, now Battalion Chief of the fire department, to his burned-out bookie, Dominic “Whoosh” Zerilli—and by the arsonist’s apparent determination to torch every structure in Rhode Island’s capital. At length the mounting toll includes homes, storefronts, people and Mulligan’s questionable peace of mind. When the lead he’s supplied investigators goes sour and his own life is threatened, he has no choice but to trust the cub reporter he’s been saddled with—the publisher’s son, whom he calls Thanks-Dad—and the mobsters who’d be perfectly willing to set fires themselves, but who draw the line at killing women and children. Mulligan is the perfect guide to a town in which the only ways to get things done are to be connected to the right people or to grease the right palms.”

  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 6

One of the Year's Top Debuts
- Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly has included Rogue Island in its "First Fiction" feature, naming it one of the best debut novels of 2010. The list is drawn from both genre and literary fiction, so it's quite an honor. Go to this link and scroll down for the full text


 “Definitely One of the Best of the Year”
- A Starred Review in Booklist

Born and raised in the Mount Hope section of Providence, Rhode Island, journalist Liam Mulligan won’t simply report on the rash of arsons killing lifelong friends and loved ones in his old neighborhood. He wants to know more and launches an investigation.

Along the way, he’s threatened, beaten, arrested on suspicion of arson and murder, suspended from his newspaper, and targeted with a mob contract on his life. Mulligan must turn to some unlikely allies to save his tired old neighborhood and secure justice. (cont.)
 
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Rogue Island has everything a crime fan could want: a stubborn, street-smart hero with a snarky sense of humor; more than a baker’s dozen of engaging characters; a fast-paced plot; a noirish style; a realistic post millennium newspaper setting; mean, pot-holed streets; and, best of all, a knowing portrait of a small city and a tiny state famous for inept government, jiggery-pokery, and corruption.

Debut novelist DeSilva began a four-decade career in journalism as a reporter for the Providence Journal, and his take on the city and state is harsh but also affectionate, as when he describes graft as Rhode Island’s “leading service industry,” noting that “it comes in two varieties, good and bad, just like cholesterol.”

This tremendously entertaining crime novel is definitely one of the best of the year.

(This review was slightly abridged to remove a spoiler.)

  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 8

"Rogue Island is a Winner"
– Library Journal

I have to switch up the type of books I read from time to time to broaden my thoughts as well as keep me on my toes. That was the goal when I picked up Bruce DeSilva's debut novel, Rogue Island, (October 2010), and, boy, did it deliver.

The story follows Liam Mulligan, a newspaper reporter in Providence, RI.

Mulligan, as he's known around town, was born and raised in Providence, so he knows the lay of the land and is an old pro at his job. He's used to covering the usual stories: tales of small government corruption, mafia wars, and local dog profiles. That all changes when a string of unexplained fires plague the city, killing innocent people and destroying a way of life.

DeSilva has a way of making you feel as if you are right there with Mulligan as he searches for the criminals. His writing draws you in and will keep you wanting more. I also appreciated the way he carefully described the novel's setting—it gives you a true feel for New England culture, which for me was very important in framing the entire story. (cont.)
 
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Finally, I felt the characterizations were vivid and extremely real. If I went to Rhode Island today, I would undoubtedly run into some people who fit DeSilva's descriptions.
Long story short: Rogue Island is a winner, and I hope you think so, too.

--Reviewed for Library Journal by Bobby Brinson, Senior Manager of Library Marketing, HarperCollins Publishers )

  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 10

“A Teriffic Literary Thriller” And “A Serious Work of Fiction”
-- Howard Frank Mosher

Bruce DeSilva has written an absolutely terrific literary thriller. Right out of the ever-so-hardboiled, ever-so-good-hearted tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, DeSilva’s Rogue Island is the funniest and best-written suspense novel I’ve read in years.

Meet Liam Mulligan, a newspaperman’s newspaperman, who covers the gritty, often-horrifying underside of Providence, Rhode (Rogue) Island. Mulligan’s a wonderful character. He’s on the run from his half-crazed, estranged wife, at odds with his boss (and, come to think of it, just about everyone else), and as anarchical – and ethical – as they come. He’s got a car named Secretariat that barely runs, a girlfriend who won’t sleep with him until he goes for an AIDS test, and a string of unsolved, murderous arson cases to investigate in the neighborhood he grew up in.

(cont)
 
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Liam Mulligan’s whole life seems to be an illustration of Murphy’s Law writ large. But he is determined to get to the bottom of the fires that are literally burning up his home town before his eyes. Fire, in Mulligan’s beloved Providence, has become an absolute force of evil: “I heard the fire before I felt it, the flames sounding like a thousand flags snapping in the wind. I felt it before I saw it, the heat like a backhand slap from the devil.”

Don’t be fooled, though, by the non-stop drama, horror and black humor of DeSilva’s first novel. For all its merits as a thriller, Rogue Island is a highly serious work of fiction combining a fascinating and authentic evocation of a 21st-century American city with a lyrical tribute to the dying newspaper business.

  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 12

“A "Rollicking Debut Crime Thriller"
-- The Associated Press

Metro reporter Liam Mulligan gets no respect from City Hall as he uncovers a deadly arson conspiracy that threatens the Mount Hope neighborhood of Providence, R.I.

"Why don't you go cover a traffic accident?" one senior official tells him. "Better yet, have one."

An old-school newspaperman who proudly declares, "I know the cops and the robbers, the barbers and the bartenders, the judges and the hit men, the whores and the priests," Mulligan sets a lively and irreverent tone as narrator of Rogue Island, the rollicking debut crime thriller from Bruce DeSilva, a former writing coach for The Associated Press.

Adopting a crisp, fast-paced style that echoes the work of Jimmy Breslin, Mike Barnicle and Mike Royko — renowned real-life journalists upon whom Mulligan is loosely modeled — DeSilva colorfully evokes the drama of crime reporting in a gritty, urban atmosphere where rules are made to be broken. "Without the lubricant of graft and personal connections, not much would get done in Rhode Island," Mulligan informs us, "and nothing at all would happen on time."

(cont)
 
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Like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Mulligan serves the cause of justice while drinking, bantering, smoking, fighting and exerting an irresistible attraction on members of the opposite sex. But self-doubt, not swagger, turns out to be his most interesting quality. As newspapers across the country struggle for survival and once-mighty media corporations teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, Mulligan is keenly aware that his cherished way of life could vanish at any moment.

So when a firebug begins torching the neighborhood where Mulligan grew up, it's more than just a crime story. "I kept digging, double-checking documents and re-interviewing sources," he tells us. "I felt darn right homicidal."

And we have to wonder just how seriously Mulligan meant that boast. As the story develops, he finds himself accused of murder and much else.

  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 14

“Rich Dialogue,” “Perfect Pacing,” and “The Plot is Thrilling”
-- Jim Taricani, WJAR-TV, Channel 10, Providence, RI

If you, "know a guy"— and if you've been a resident of the fine State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations for more than a day, you probably do "know a guy"— you'll be wise to buy a copy of a new novel by Bruce DeSilva, Rogue Island.

The reporter, Liam Mulligan, a wise-cracking, old fashioned investigative reporter for a dying newspaper in Providence, finds himself investigating a string of deadly fires set by an arsonist in the fictional Mt. Hope section of the city.

Mulligan, a cigar-smoking, drink-too-much, womanizing investigative reporter, is tight with cops, firefighters, and politicians, both the honest, and not-so-honest types, and converses easily with neighborhood wiseguys.

One of Mulligan's go-to street sources is a wiseguy by the name of Dominic Zerilli—whose nickname is "Woosh"—the name derived from the flash paper Zerilli used as a bookie, the kind of paper that when the cops come calling, bookies like Zerilli ignite with the butt they're smoking, instantly destroying the evidence.(cont.)
 
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DeSilva has masterfully developed the character of Mulligan, who he admits is part auto-biographical. For the most part, Rogue Island is a work of fiction, but fiction that many Rhode Islanders will swear they've experienced in real life.

"The plot isn't based on any real event," DeSilva said. "It's entirely made up, but the experience of being an investigative journalist in Rhode Island reflects a lot of what I wrote.”

The rich dialogue, the perfect pacing and the meaningful humor make Rogue Island a pure pleasure to read.

The plot is thrilling, and Mulligan's relationship with his nagging ex-wife, a girlfriend, and a woman who wants to be his girlfriend, keeps a reader laughing throughout the book.
DeSilva's writing style reminds me of writings of authors like the late Robert Parker, and James Lee Burke. This first time novelist's dialogue is sharp and clean, and Mulligan's sardonic wit makes for an impressionable and lasting character.

DeSilva is nearly finished with his second novel, using Liam Mulligan as the centerpiece once again.

Rogue Island, and its author DeSilva make "an offer Rhode Islanders shouldn't refuse."
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 16

“Rogue Island Bristles with Intrigue, Revenge and Paybacks”
-- The Providence Journal

This ribald, rowdy, riotous romp about Rogue, er, Rhode Island, is fast-paced, suspenseful, peopled with bookies, slick lawyers, mobsters, reporters, strippers, manhole scams, Mr. Potato Heads, a dumb and dumber arson squad, with walk-ons from Buddy Cianci and Manny Ramirez, and focuses on an arsonist’s scheme to burn down most of the Mount Hope neighborhood.

DeSilva writes dialogue that will curl your hair while you’re laughing out loud.... Our hero is a cynically witty, sardonic reporter, Liam Mulligan. Thugs assault him; a local vigilante group with baseball bats is ever-present; his crazed and angry wife (soon to be an ex) calls him at odd hours to accuse him of sleeping with everyone in sight; he gets involved with the mob and uncovers evidence in spurious and illegal ways. And he always has his eyes open to scrutinize all the qualities of his beloved state amid the bribes, betrayals and bimbos who inhabit the wickedly demented and loveable city of Providence.

(cont.) 
 
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I loved the bookie who works in his underwear above a grocery store, the retired fireman drinking his life away in a dingy room, the cops and the mayor who play every political angle possible, the beautiful, smart reporter Veronica who somehow has an “in” with the grand jury, the nepotism-appointed nabobs, Ruggerio “The Blind Pig” Bruccola, and Rosella Morelli, the tough battalion chief.

DeSilva creates an entire authentic realm that bristles with intrigue, revenge and paybacks, along with folks who bellow, “Shut up, daboatayuz” (the both of you) and “Jeet yet?” (Did you eat yet?). Ya gotta love ’em.

--Reviewed by Sam Coale, who teaches literature at Wheaton College.
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 18

“Rogue Island merits a comparison to the great Ross MacDonald”
-- Minneapolis Star Tribune

Mulligan is a pit bull in his approach to a story and old school in his approach to life. His beat includes Mount Hope, R.I., where a serial arsonist is burning Mulligan's neighborhood to the ground, one duplex and storefront at a time. The arson detectives in charge of the case, not so affectionately known as "Dumb and Dumber," couldn't smell smoke if they were on fire. Mulligan investigates by stalking his neighborhood--hanging out in corner taverns, interviewing crooks and corrupt politicians, digging in the ashes of each of the fires--until he starts to see a pattern. The problem is that the pattern becomes personal, eventually forcing Mulligan to abandon more than just his journalistic ethics.

As much as I liked Mullligan, I appreciated DeSilva's ironic and insightful sense of place even more. Home to Puritans, pirates and Mr. Potato Head, Rhode Island, or "Rogue Island," the moniker the "sturdy farmers of colonial Massachusetts" gave to the "swarm of heretics, smugglers and cutthroats" who settled the state, is as lively and authentic as the novel's other characters. In fact, DeSilva's approach to setting reminded me a little of Ross MacDonald's keen observations and cynical take on Southern California in his novels.
 
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-- Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, who teaches at Alverno College in Milwaukee.
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 20

“Rogue Island is “a Rollicking Debut”
--The Associated Press

Metro reporter Liam Mulligan gets no respect from City Hall as he uncovers a deadly arson conspiracy that threatens the Mount Hope neighborhood of Providence, R.I.
" Why don't you go cover a traffic accident?" one senior official tells him. "Better yet, have one."

An old-school newspaperman who proudly declares, "I know the cops and the robbers, the barbers and the bartenders, the judges and the hit men, the whores and the priests," Mulligan sets a lively and irreverent tone as narrator of "Rogue Island," the rollicking debut crime thriller from Bruce DeSilva, a former writing coach for The Associated Press.

Adopting a crisp, fast-paced style that echoes the work of Jimmy Breslin, Mike Barnicle and Mike Royko — renowned real-life journalists upon whom Mulligan is loosely modeled — DeSilva colorfully evokes the drama of crime reporting in a gritty, urban atmosphere where rules are made to be broken. "Without the lubricant of graft and personal connections, not much would get done in Rhode Island," Mulligan informs us, "and nothing at all would happen on time." (cont.)
 
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Like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Mulligan serves the cause of justice while drinking, bantering, smoking, fighting and exerting an irresistible attraction on members of the opposite sex. But self-doubt, not swagger, turns out to be his most interesting quality. As newspapers across the country struggle for survival and once-mighty media corporations teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, Mulligan is keenly aware that his cherished way of life could vanish at any moment.

So when a firebug begins torching the neighborhood where Mulligan grew up, it's more than just a crime story. "I kept digging, double-checking documents and re-interviewing sources," he tells us. "I felt darn right homicidal."

--Reviewed by Jonathan Lopez, author of the Edgar-nominated true-crime book "The Man Who Made Vermeers."
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 22

“Rogue Island’s hero has “charisma and grit.'”
-- Suspense Magazine

Investigative journalist Mulligan, drags us through the graft of the corruption that is Providence Rhode Island, his beat; one that includes both crooked and inept cops, the mobsters they are chasing and the politicians who fund them all. Definitely an eye-opener for me, who always had thought of our smallest State as being full of Portuguese fishermen thanks to Rudyard Kipling. He would be surprised at the change!

Mulligan is one of us, the common people. He has a wife he’s trying to divorce, a boss who is never satisfied, long-standing friends and an ulcer he is trying to nurse. He also has a couple of informants on the wrong side of the street, a bookie with ties to the local mobsters he is investigating and a girl-friend who is holding out again. He is also totally believable; the flawed protagonist we can all relate to.

When a fire-bug starts burning down the neighborhood he grew up in, house by house, he takes to the streets with his newspaper colleagues in an effort to find out who is behind the fires. When he discovers the truth of who is really behind the tragedy, death and destruction, Mulligan is forced to take matters in his own hands. (cont.)
 
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Bruised, battered and scarred we are given an open-eyed tour of Mount Hope. What you find there may surprise you. With charisma, grit and the knowledge that all will be right in the world as long as the Red Sox win the pennant, DeSilva leads us through the world of the local newspaper reporter. In this tough, barred-knuckles fight the good guy is triumphant this time…until the next big story, and boy I’ll be waiting to read that one too.

Reviewed by Mark P. Sadler, author of “Blood on His Hands”, for Suspense Magazine.
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 24

“One of the Year’s Strongest Debuts”
-- Kansas City Star

Former Associated Press reporter - and sometimes book reviewer - Bruce DeSilva delivers a strong, well-plotted mystery debut that looks at organized crime, political conspiracies and the newspaper industry.

DeSilva's affinity for channeling energetic storytelling into believable characters in a setting - Rhode Island - seldom covered by mysteries shines in "Rogue Island." "Rogue Island" shows how real people live and struggle in the smallest state, far from the mansions and beaches commonly associated with Rhode Island. "Rogue Island" also is a valentine to the newspaper industry, showing the thrill of a good story, of how ferreting out corruption can sustain a journalist in a troubled industry.

"Old-school newspaperman" is an apt description of Liam Mulligan, who covers Providence with confidence and skill. He knows every nook and cranny of his hometown. He also on a first-name basis with mobsters, bookies, cops, fire fighters, attorneys and strippers - mainly because he grew up with them in the down-at-its-heels Mount Hope neighborhood.
(cont.)
 
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Liam is on the story when a series of fires erupt in Mount Hope. He knows it's arson but the city's arson investigators don't see a pattern to the fires that have killed several people and destroyed tenements.

DeSilva strikes a good balance by evoking the seedy side of Providence without making it too sordid. "Rogue Island's" twists and turns are believable as DeSilva takes the reader on a merry ride.

Liam is a multi-dimensional character who is equally appealing, exasperating, arrogant, compassionate and vengeful. Liam's love of the newspaper industry - and the power of journalism - is paramount and missed terribly when forced to be away from the newsroom.

DeSilva's "Rogue Island" is one of the year's strongest debuts.

--Reviewed by Oline Cogdill .
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 26

Rogue Island is “An Exhilarating Mystery”
-- Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews

In Providence, Rhode Island, a serial arsonist is torching the Mount Hope section over the last three months with nine fires and five corpses. Reporter Liam Mulligan wants to catch the murderer who has killed friends and acquaintances from his old neighborhood. The city residents are in a panic as the police and fire department seem helpless.

Mulligan’s inquiry is enabled by a horde of collaborators stonewalled by a stunning coalition of cops, fire inspectors, politicians and landlords who make up the seamier underbelly of the city. Lawyers are thrown at him and the newspaper with threats to bankrupt the paper. The case turns even nastier when the police probe Mulligan insisting they have probable cause to name him a person of interest.

(cont.)
 
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The key element to this strong arson investigative noir is the support cast of hookers, runners, bookies and hoods who make the atmosphere come darkly alive and mouthy Mulligan fit as one of them. The whodunit is cleverly devised to keep readers’ attention with a strong spin that will stun the audience. However, it is the denizen of the streets of the Mount Hope neighborhood especially in contrast to the “Suits” who make this an exhilarating mystery.
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 28

"Rogue Island raises the bar for all books of its kind”
--The Dallas Morning News

Providence, R.I., in the winter, with a serial arsonist setting working-class houses on fire, sometimes at the rate of four a night – that's the setting and the occasion of Rogue Island, Bruce DeSilva's lively first novel. Narrated by a local investigative journalist named Liam Mulligan, who has won some prizes and suffers from stomach ulcers, the book captures in sound and spirit a location not often celebrated.

The fact that his old neighborhood is going up in flames, and adults and sometimes children and firefighters are dying in the fires, pushes Mulligan into a quest to find the arsonist. DeSilva writes such an engaging first-person story, making Mulligan come to life line by line by line, that most readers will be pulled into following him.

The going gets tough in an early scene of the book, when Mulligan sets out to interview the city's chief arson investigator. "From the outside, the drab government building looked like randomly stacked cardboard boxes. Inside, the halls were grimy ... The johns, when they weren't padlocked to save civil servants from drowning, were fragrant and toxic. The elevators rattled and wheezed like a geezer chasing a taxi ..."
 
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You don't just get the picture of local government sunk deep in its own impoverishment of physical plant and spirit, you see the picture, you hear the sound of it. DeSilva empowers Mulligan to get to the bottom of this story and find a motive for the arsonist and, possibly, find out if anyone else is behind the torching of his old neighborhood. He allows us to take delight in the way he tells it, in as lively a manner as any recent debut novelist writing about crime, politics, love and mayhem in an urban American setting.

The deeper Mulligan digs into the ethics of Providence, where a bribe is required to obtain even AIDS test results in less than two months, the more energy the character generates on the page. And the more delight – if that's what you can call the effect of reading a terrifically well-managed story about betrayal, theft, graft and chicanery – he brings to the reader. The newsroom where Mulligan catches flak from less talented editors stands juxtaposed against the misery on the nighttime streets, where local thugs armed with baseball bats patrol the neighborhoods in hopes of catching the arsonist in the act.

(cont.)
 
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 30

Mulligan's newspaper, like the city itself, seems to be stumbling toward disaster at a quickening pace, caught in the cross hairs of the Internet revolution and losing money by the month. Mulligan's office romance with a new young Taiwanese-American journalist named Veronica offers him some respite from the daily, and nightly, grind of professional misery and fire-starting. At least at first.

Sustained by Veronica's kisses and a lot of takeout dinners, Mulligan stays coolly in pursuit as part of Providence burns and the forces of evil seem to be dancing gleefully around the ruins. He also takes some physical punishment from hired thugs as well as constant telephone abuse from his ex-wife, and endures the nuisance of bosses whose vagaries can only come from cowardice and stupidity.

I don't want you to think this novel comes across as too somber. DeSilva creates lively dialogue, mostly in the vernacular, which means R-rated speech, and Mulligan's declarations on urban decay, graft in the civic realm, the history of the state of poor little Rhode Island and the state of love make for good reading. A first novel of liveliness that shows off the skill of a mature craftsman, Rogue Island raises the bar for all books of its kind.
 
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-- Review written by Alan Cheuse, an NPR commentator and author of four novels, three collections of short fiction, and the memoir Fall Out of Heaven.
  
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 32

"A loving tribute to a golden age of journalism”
--The Washington Post

DeSilva has 40 years of newspapering behind him, mostly with the Associated Press, and his first novel is as good and true a look at the news game as you'll find this side of "The Front Page." Old newspapermen -- we are legion -- will delight in the book, as should anyone who appreciates a well-written, funny, sad, suspenseful look at this bewildering world we live in.

Our hero is, of course, a reporter, one L.S.A. Mulligan. He's 39 years old and has spent 18 years with an unnamed daily in his home town, Providence, R.I. Along the way he won a Pulitzer Prize, but he continues to live in a shabby apartment, to drive a battered Ford Bronco he calls Secretariat, to work for peanuts and to suffer the slings and arrows of his almost-ex-wife: "Dorcas had seemed to be a perfectly decent human being until she woke up married to me."

Undaunted, Mulligan is falling for a gorgeous reporter in her 20s, although she refuses to consummate the matter until he passes an AIDS test. Alas, it takes the local health department eight weeks to process a test. Even after Mulligan slips the clerk a $20 bribe, it'll still take four."
 
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"Rogue Island" is often hilarious, though built around a deadly serious plot. That's clear on its first page, when Mulligan races to a house on fire in working-class Mount Hope, where he grew up, and finds that 5-year-old twins had crawled under a bed to escape the flames. The fireman who carried one of them down the ladder wept: "The body was black and smoking." A serial arsonist is at work in Mount Hope, many more people die, and Mulligan, having no faith in the city's incompetent police and crooked politicians, embarks on a personal crusade to find the killer.

Arson is no joke, but DeSilva injects comedy into the darkness. A couple who recently moved to Providence from Oregon insist that their dog is a latter-day Lassie who followed them across the country on foot; Mulligan proves otherwise..

(cont.)
 
 

Bruce DeSilva - Reviews Page 34

When Mulligan knocks on a door and tells a woman, "I'm a reporter for the paper," she naturally replies, "We already take the paper." As an example of the local brand of justice, Mulligan tells us about the star forward for Providence College who "had been sentenced to twenty hours of community service for breaking his English tutor's arm with a lug wrench." Then there's the local corruption. The city's chief arson investigator "aced the sergeant's exam by paying the going rate of five hundred dollars for the answers, then rose through the ranks the Rhode Island way, slipping envelopes to the mayor's bagman." DeSilva lets Mulligan explain his novel's title: "Rhode Island is a bastardization of Rogue Island, a name the sturdy farmers of colonial Massachusetts bestowed upon the swarm of heretics, smugglers, and cutthroats who first settled the shores of Narragansett Bay."

In this account, the rogues still rule."

We meet Mulligan's take-no-prisoners city editor; his favorite bookie; some mobsters who may be involved in the arson; and his publisher's son, fresh out of J-school, who survives Mulligan's scorn and proves to be not a bad fellow. Although set in the present, "Rogue Island" is in truth a loving tribute to a golden age of journalism that now has all but vanished.
 
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