In this low-down, dirty tale of bad guys and worse cops, Robert
Leuci gives life to a well-worn theme with dark humour, an eye
for the bizarre, and snappy, wise-cracking dialogue. The author,
himself an ex-undercover detective, obviously knows his stuff
and his years on the beat lend the action a razor-sharp ring of
authenticity. But this is more than just a police procedural and
Leuci’s talent for spinning an engrossing, often funny yarn holds
it all together excellently.
Renegades revolves around three boyhood friends, once as
close as brothers, but now on opposing sides in the crime war.
Two, Detectives Jimmy Burns and Dante O’Donnell, are now partnered
in the Organised Crime Task Force, while the third, JoJo Paradiso,
has gone into the family business and has become the powerful
underboss of the Paradiso Mafia clan. The inevitable collision
course between the old friends is set when the two cops are assigned
to the surveillance team gathering evidence against the Paradiso
family.
JoJo, though, has more than just the Feds to worry about. There’s
the secret drug deal he’s setting up behind his ailing capo father’s
back; there’s the growing power struggle within the family’s ranks;
but worst of all is the news from a well-placed police informant
that a traitor close to the heart of the family is feeding information
to the Feds. When the power struggle explodes into a brutal underworld
war, the identities of the betrayers on both sides are revealed
with fatal repercussions. As the story moves relentlessly towards
a perfectly orchestrated finale, the lines between loyalty and
betrayal are redrawn.
Robert Leuci does a nice job of exploring the grey areas between
honesty and corruption, loyalty and treachery. As the tale unfolds
it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the good guys
from the bad guys and unsettling parallels are drawn between the
two sides of law and disorder. With Leuci there are no comfortable
moral absolutes.
Although the Mafioso-Cop territory is overly familiar, Renegades
has enough spark in it to ignite a story which could have
been another trudge through multiple shootings and mounds of linguini.
Admittedly some of the dialogue verges on clichéd Wiseguy
speak – take this for a cheesy piece of Mafia wisdom by which
to live and die: ‘Look after your friends but take care of your
enemies…’ But on the whole Renegades is good, dirty,
double-dealing fun.
Reviewed by Jon Mitchell
