It’s not Liverpool they’re leaving, it’s freakin’ Providence. They have to put a lot of miles between them and the Moretti crime family, the city cops, the state troopers, the feds . . . just about everybody. It was their safety net, the getaway money, the funds that would let them go off the radar until things cooled down. So the trilogy shifts to Vegas next. What are you using as the proxy myth for the final installment?

And when Hollywood starts shooting a film based on his former life, Danny demands a piece of the action and begins to rebuild his criminal empire. It depends. Some of them were really tough. Aeolus, who's the God of the winds, who blows Aeneas around the Mediterranean for quite a few years—who would that be? And his mom, who is Aphrodite in the Greek and Venus in the Roman—in Providence, Rhode Island, in the 1980s, who the hell is Aphrodite? Winslow’s drug war version of The Godfather...a big, sprawling, ultimately stunning crime tableau...A magnum opus...Don Winslow is to the Mexican drug wars what James Ellroy is to L.A. Noir.” – Janet Maslin, New York Times City on Fire” was a compelling book and this one only gets better. The characters are stronger– particularly the women– and readers are going to hunger to see the Vegas finale of this saga in the next one, “City in Ruins.” Collectively, Sean and Kevin are known as the Altar Boys. They like to go around saying that they serve “Last Communion.”

The Sydney Morning Herald

The first novel in an epic crime saga about the Irish and Italian crime syndicates in America during the 1980s and 1990s.

CITY OF DREAMS is a crime classic. Winslow's best book, by far. You won't put it down’ Stephen King Para los que ya habéis leído la primera parte, pero os pasa como a mí, que tenéis la memoria de Dory de 'Buscando a Nemo', no os preocupéis, Winslow nos refresca la historia anterior en los primeros capítulos, lo que para mí ha sido una maravilla.

BookBliss

This is a busy book, with lots of twists and turns and never a dull moment. It’s a dark story, a gritty story but with some real pathos.

A masterwork of mob fiction. . . . City on Firedoes for Rhode Island what David Chase’s The Sopranosdid for New Jersey. . . This novel, the first in a planned trilogy, could well end up in the American-mob canon along with the works of Puzo, Scorsese and Chase.”— Washington Post on City on Fire This was by far the toughest, because the latter part of The Aeneid is mostly a battle story. Aeneas basically camps out near Rome, invades it, and takes over. And the issue that Virgil used was a marriage to a young woman who was promised to somebody else. In a contemporary crime story, that just wasn’t going to work, and it took me years, unfortunately, to think, “What could I use? What would be the equivalent of that?” And then the thought was, “Okay, get out of the channel. Get out of that narrowly focused thinking. Who or what could substitute for that woman?” The answer was a casino property that they had promised to somebody else; he comes in and grabs it and launches this conflict. That broke it open for me, once I got away from it being a romantic thing. No—it's a property thing. It’s a power thing. A landmark moment in crime fiction. . . It is Winslow’s remarkable ability to translate the utter fiasco of our 5-year War on Drugs into the most wrenching of human stories, tragedy seemingly without end, that gives this novel its unparalleled power.” – Booklist[starred review] The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot. Danny is forced to run, and now in the second volume, City Of Dreams , we see him as a fugitive, desperately fleeing from the local cops, the Mafia, and the Feds, all of whom are trying to kill him. With his senile father and infant son in tow, he wanders the country trying to find a place to set his feet, to create a life that he’s only dreamed of. His travels take him from the frigid Atlantic winter to the warm sands of a Pacific beach, from the harsh reality of the desert to soft and seductive Hollywood, the city of dreams.But then I also took the liberty of getting away from The Aeneid. I was fascinated by what happens after the Trojan War. The Iliad famously begins in the middle and ends in the middle. Everybody thinks you find the Trojan horse in the Iliad—you don't. It's not there. It’s in The Aeneid. He’s telling Dido his story. So I've been fascinated as to, “Where do all these people go? What are their fates? What happened to them? Can I take that and put it into the contemporary crime situation?” The single best use of mescaline in literature ever (yes, I read The Doors of Perception and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.) This very much feels as though it’s a transitional book, a much more sedately paced story chronicling life on the run of a former gangster. There’s a great deal of character development going on, something that Don Winslow is highly adept at crafting. This helps us to become more attuned to Danny and his crew along with the changing of the guard in Providence. DON WINSLOW: I think Homer was probably the better poet, so if you just ask me in terms straight of literature, I would tilt toward Homer. But if you're asking me for my purposes for this trilogy, I definitely tilt toward The Aeneid. I loved the California setting for this story. We see a new side to Danny as a father and a son. He knows he has made some dreadful life choices, and wants a different life for his son Ian. It is an emotional read, while still being violent, dark and messy as you would expect. The body count is high, so don't get attached to any of the characters