Mark Torrence is a decent man--a dedicated youth counselor; a loving husband and father; a person whose ingrained honesty and integrity is evident in his every action and all his personal dealings. But in a previous New York City life, before he "ratted" and vanished into the Witness Protection Program, Mark Torrence was Tommy Torrelli, an associate of wiseguys who made their bones through violence, extortion, thievery, and worse. Now a world-class hit man with a swollen bank account has agreed to take Torrence/Torrelli down gratis, in order to satisfy inner demons who will only be appeased by vengeance and with blood. As an ever-tightening circle of terror closes in around him, Torrence realizes that his new identity has suddenly become a liability. And the only way he can save his unsuspecting family--the only way he can survive--is by becoming something he truly despises: the man he once was.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Before his strange death in 1997 (his body was found hanging outside his Chicago office), Eugene Izzi wrote some of the best crime fiction in recent memory. His hard-edged books like A Matter of Honor and The Criminalist are told from the criminal's point of view.
Safe Harbor was first published in England in 1995, when Izzi was having trouble finding an American outlet. It's a familiar story: the mobster who becomes an informer for the best of reasons (in this case to protect his child) and then enters a witness protection program and goes on to lead a blameless life. Mark Torrence (called Tommy Torelli in his criminal days) is threatened in his new and secret life by a ghost from the past--a vengeful hit man named James Bracken. This vicious and depraved killer has his own very good and perversely logical reasons for hunting down Torrence.
What gives the book new life and lots of energy is the way Izzi develops his characters using small strokes of reality. Even the incredibly obnoxious next-door neighbor who accidentally leaks Torrence's true identity is made human because we get to peek into his daily life.
Not having any more new books by Izzi to look forward to is a great loss, but the late arrival of Safe Harbor makes it a bit more bearable. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Crisply drawn lives of violence and redemption propel this fully dimensional novel of organized crime and inner-city life. Tommy Torelli was a favorite leg man for New York mob boss Pete Papa until Tommy squealed during a prison term, joining the FBI's witness protection program in order to save his infant son from Pete's threats. With help from a federal marshal, Tommy became "Mark Torrence," left the program, married again and had a daughter as companion for his son, and ran a center for troubled kids in the toughest section of South Chicago. When a nosy journalist's photographs reveal Mark's whereabouts to Pete, he sets sociopathic hitman James BrackenAwhose lover was killed because Torelli turnedAon Mark's trail. Then a retarded teen from Mark's youth center provokes a standoff with the police, finally committing suicide despite Mark's intervention. When the story makes the front pages, along with Mark's picture, Mark knows his life of hiding is over. Izzi (The Criminalist) constructs his wary characters and his suspenseful plot with assiduous attention to detail, and with few wasted words, exposing the two-way street of racial injustice, the realities of police brutality and the hollow "honor" of mob loyalties. This posthumously published novel stands out even amid the other fine crime novels by Izzi, who died in 1996: serious indignation and serious research lie behind this compellingly readable tale of a corrupt society and a genuine hero.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very good read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Safe Harbor (Hardcover)
SAFE HARBOR is a fitting novel that triumphantly shows thetalent of the late Eugene Izzi. The story line moves rather quickly asits centers on life in the slums and the mob. Mr. Izzi carefully defines his characters with motives that make their actions seem genuine. The cast turns the well-written plot of SAFE HARBOR into a safe bet. Fans and critics will recognize this book as one of the year,s best stories. Renowned for novels like THE CRIMINALIST, Mr. Izzi has left his fans with a special legacy that probably is his best work in an illustrious career.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cage or cemetery?,
By Gerburg Frick "narrator of Red Cage, true acc... (Lake Orion, MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Safe Harbor (Hardcover)
The style of this author is o.k.; somewhat repeat with not enough dialogues so the descriptions become tedious, but the action is compelling. This is the first book I read by Eugene Izzi. For people emmigrating to the US., this book could surely be an eye-opener about the "promised land": The crime scenes of the inner cities. The author gives the impression that he knows first-hand what he is writing about. This book is about the hopelessness of the youth being forced to become gang-bangers, clutched in a vicious circle of immorality, when the formative teenage years are wasted in hopelessness. In the United States, a good youth program is to lock them up. Nasty as the Nazis were, they had an idealistic youth program (Hitler-Jugend), because it was believed that the youth is the future of a nation. In this book the outlook is dim, as the only way out for the inner-city youth is a cage or the cemetery. The statistics don't lie: 10 000 people die each year by fire-arms in the United States, while in other countries the number is around 160. I have to give this book a lot of credit for its naked reality, as shocking as it is.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Above-average crime melodrama,
By
This review is from: Safe Harbor (Hardcover)
This a good example of the sort of thing it is - namely a story of undecover, larger-than-life killers, crooks, and losers whose paths converge in a final conflict wherein demons are exorcised and good prevails (relatively speaking). The author is a thoroughgoing craftsman who spends a good deal of his book painstakingly developing the characters and lives of his protagonists, who include a dropout from the witness-protection program, a homosexual hit man, an embittered journalist, and assorted loved ones, cops, and victims. The author's writing skills are sufficient to keep the reader interested until the real action begins, along about page 200. And the story is resolved without requiring anyone to step completely out of character, as is often a failing of lesser authors. This story is basically that of an up-and-coming mobster who rats on his associates and is granted federal protection. Some years later, having left the program and achieved an honest life on his own, he finds himself pursued by the past in the person of an ingenious killer with a grudge. It is the tragic nature of such novels that the characters ultimately find themselves responding to malevolent forces outside their control rather than acting on their own volition. It's also interesting to note that in most formulaic books such as this, nobody (notably the author) is permitted to display any sense of humor or any ability to stand aside from or transcend the limits of his situation. This lack of dimension makes such books and their characters easy to forget, however entertaining they may be, and is in my estimation a large part of what separates potboilers from good literature. But I suppose that without the former to keep the presses rolling, there would be no publishing business around when needed to produce the latter.
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