By Paul Carrier
It’s probably a safe bet that the folks who are in the business of promoting tourism and economic development in Providence are not out there hawking Bruce DeSilva’s Rogue Island to visitors and corporate execs.
I love Rhode Island, having worked there way back when. I lived in Providence for a time and enjoyed every minute of it, even though, in those days, Rhode Island’s capital city had yet to undergo the revitalization for which it is now famous.
Still, Providence has an image problem. Perhaps the city’s reputation isn’t entirely deserved, but the fact remains that Providence is associated in the public mind with colorfully nicknamed mobsters, corrupt politicians (the real-life Buddy Cianci may ring a bell), crooked cops, and “public servants” who expect to have their palms greased in exchange for doing their jobs.
It’s that seedy side of Providence that provides the backdrop for DeSilva’s 2010 debut, which launched a series of novels featuring Liam Mulligan, a jaded but conscientious newspaper reporter who loves cigars, the Red Sox and, truth be told, the city he calls home. Mulligan hails from Mount Hope, a working-class neighborhood in Providence, and he knows his way around the city’s bookie joints, strip clubs and dive bars.
As Rogue Island opens, someone is burning down house after house in Mount Hope, and killing innocent people in the process, including a young set of twins. Mulligan (don’t call him Liam!) is trying to figure out who’s responsible, and why. Is it an insurance scam? The work of an amoral fireman who's far too fond of his job? A redevelopment scheme? Or maybe the hobby of a crazed firebug who sets fires for kicks?
Cruising the streets at night, Mulligan has no luck catching the arsonist in the act, although he comes close to nabbing a mysterious character who turns up in newspaper photographers’ crowd shots from several blazes. The city’s two-man arson squad isn’t faring any better. When Mulligan writes an exposé documenting their incompetence, the newspaper dubs them Dumb and Dumber, a reference to the 1994 movie directed by Rhode Island’s own Farrelly brothers.
Then an already horrid situation becomes truly horrific. Five more buildings in Mount Hope are torched, all in one night. Mulligan is threatened at home by a thug lugging a gas can. And a photographer from Mulligan’s newspaper who’s also been roaming Mount Hope in search of the killer narrowly escapes being raped by an assailant who calls her a “nosy picture-taking bitch.”
Mulligan has more on his plate in this hard-boiled tale than bringing an arsonist to justice. He keeps getting in trouble with his editor for his renegade ways. His soon-to-be ex repeatedly accuses him of shacking up with every woman in town. He’s stuck babysitting the son of the newspaper’s aging owner, so junior can learn the ropes from the ground up before taking over. In a truly bizarre twist, Mulligan even gets nabbed as a suspect.
And then there’s the elephant in the newsroom. Mulligan’s employer, like newspapers across the country, is hemorrhaging millions of dollars in revenue every year, thanks to the ascendance of the Internet and the fading popularity of print journalism among readers and advertisers.
DeSilva deftly captures the oddities of Rhode Island mores, such as the perception that the only way to get things done in “Little Rhody” is to know someone or to bribe someone. “Graft, Rhode Island’s leading service industry, is widely misunderstood by citizens of states you can’t stroll across on your lunch break,” Mulligan explains, adding that it comes in two forms. Bad graft enriches politicians and their pals, while good graft “supplements the wages of underpaid government workers, puts braces on their kids’ teeth, builds college funds.”
Thanks to DeSilva’s long journalistic career in Rhode Island and elsewhere, Rogue Island also captures the pride that old-school journalists like Mulligan take in their work — or did before the Internet changed everything. Looking back on his childhood, the 39-year-old Mulligan says he understood even as a kid that “the newspaper is the only institution people trust to tell the truth” in a state where politicians “lie like the rest of us breathe.”
DeSilva is the author of five Mulligan novels, the most recent of which, The Dread Line, was published last year. If the sure-footed Rogue Island is any indication, it’s a fast-paced, skillfully crafted series full of not-so-charming characters, with a smart-alecky protagonist who’s as resourceful as he is skeptical.
Still, Providence has an image problem. Perhaps the city’s reputation isn’t entirely deserved, but the fact remains that Providence is associated in the public mind with colorfully nicknamed mobsters, corrupt politicians (the real-life Buddy Cianci may ring a bell), crooked cops, and “public servants” who expect to have their palms greased in exchange for doing their jobs.
It’s that seedy side of Providence that provides the backdrop for DeSilva’s 2010 debut, which launched a series of novels featuring Liam Mulligan, a jaded but conscientious newspaper reporter who loves cigars, the Red Sox and, truth be told, the city he calls home. Mulligan hails from Mount Hope, a working-class neighborhood in Providence, and he knows his way around the city’s bookie joints, strip clubs and dive bars.
As Rogue Island opens, someone is burning down house after house in Mount Hope, and killing innocent people in the process, including a young set of twins. Mulligan (don’t call him Liam!) is trying to figure out who’s responsible, and why. Is it an insurance scam? The work of an amoral fireman who's far too fond of his job? A redevelopment scheme? Or maybe the hobby of a crazed firebug who sets fires for kicks?
Cruising the streets at night, Mulligan has no luck catching the arsonist in the act, although he comes close to nabbing a mysterious character who turns up in newspaper photographers’ crowd shots from several blazes. The city’s two-man arson squad isn’t faring any better. When Mulligan writes an exposé documenting their incompetence, the newspaper dubs them Dumb and Dumber, a reference to the 1994 movie directed by Rhode Island’s own Farrelly brothers.
Then an already horrid situation becomes truly horrific. Five more buildings in Mount Hope are torched, all in one night. Mulligan is threatened at home by a thug lugging a gas can. And a photographer from Mulligan’s newspaper who’s also been roaming Mount Hope in search of the killer narrowly escapes being raped by an assailant who calls her a “nosy picture-taking bitch.”
Mulligan has more on his plate in this hard-boiled tale than bringing an arsonist to justice. He keeps getting in trouble with his editor for his renegade ways. His soon-to-be ex repeatedly accuses him of shacking up with every woman in town. He’s stuck babysitting the son of the newspaper’s aging owner, so junior can learn the ropes from the ground up before taking over. In a truly bizarre twist, Mulligan even gets nabbed as a suspect.
And then there’s the elephant in the newsroom. Mulligan’s employer, like newspapers across the country, is hemorrhaging millions of dollars in revenue every year, thanks to the ascendance of the Internet and the fading popularity of print journalism among readers and advertisers.
DeSilva deftly captures the oddities of Rhode Island mores, such as the perception that the only way to get things done in “Little Rhody” is to know someone or to bribe someone. “Graft, Rhode Island’s leading service industry, is widely misunderstood by citizens of states you can’t stroll across on your lunch break,” Mulligan explains, adding that it comes in two forms. Bad graft enriches politicians and their pals, while good graft “supplements the wages of underpaid government workers, puts braces on their kids’ teeth, builds college funds.”
Thanks to DeSilva’s long journalistic career in Rhode Island and elsewhere, Rogue Island also captures the pride that old-school journalists like Mulligan take in their work — or did before the Internet changed everything. Looking back on his childhood, the 39-year-old Mulligan says he understood even as a kid that “the newspaper is the only institution people trust to tell the truth” in a state where politicians “lie like the rest of us breathe.”
DeSilva is the author of five Mulligan novels, the most recent of which, The Dread Line, was published last year. If the sure-footed Rogue Island is any indication, it’s a fast-paced, skillfully crafted series full of not-so-charming characters, with a smart-alecky protagonist who’s as resourceful as he is skeptical.
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