Bruce Desilva has been on my To Be Read list for a while,
patiently working his way to the top. He’d just about made it when his third
Liam Mulligan novel, Providence Rag,
received so much attention I thought I might do well to start from the
beginning, and chose to read Rogue Island
instead. Yay, me.

There are more people in Mulligan’s world, each with their
own memorable story, and each with their own layer to add. DeSilva handles them
all with a journalist’s confidence of knowing what’s important and what is
merely supportive. Unlike many journalists turned novelists, DeSilva has a light
touch with the writing. There is no oppressively delivered message, and the
humor runs throughout the book in appropriate ways, and is genuinely funny. His
grasp of the corruption that passes as doing business is Providence is
delivered with a combination of disdain and eye-rolling satire. (I hate
spoilers, so skip ahead if you like, but this story is too much fun not to
tell. It’s election season, and the leading contender to unseat the sitting
mayor has legally changed her name to Angelina V. aRico, so it can appear first
on the ballot. The mayor responds by changing his name to Rocco D. aaaaCarozza.
When asked by a reporter how to pronounce that, the mayor replies with a
straight face, “It’s Carozza. The four As are silent.”)
DeSilva is that rare author able to subsume his authorial
voice into the material without letting it become styleless. All the writing
flows and you’ll find yourself reading the book faster than you want to, in
part because it reads so easily, in part because it’s so much fun, and—most
important—because it’s so damn good. The ending is perfect, the kind of thing a
reporter could pull off with sufficient contacts and balls.
He’s in the rotation now. There are a lot of books lined up
to be read, but Cliff Walk (the
second Mulligan book) can’t rise to the top soon enough.
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