Cheapskates and Jimmy Bench Press by Charlie Stella

There are important differences, but happily these relate to style not quality. Pelecanos provides more description. Stella is more dialogue in the competing vernaculars of New Jersey Italian mobsters and cops.

Stella’s heroes are both ex-altar boys. In Cheapskates, the hero, Reese, is a lapsed Catholic with a grudge against God for not answering his prayer (more of a deal sealed by a minor vow of good behaviour) for good fortune for his family. But his mother and would-be girlfriend are both practicing Catholics. And by the way, Reese is black: as with Pelecanos, this is a minor matter in this book for the author, though many of the characters make much of one another’s ethnicity. Neither book carries a torch for racial justice. The ethnic differences are matter more of authenticity and interest, even richness. Interestingly, both Stella and Pelecanos alternate between white and black heroes, which is faily unusual, I believe.

The plot of Cheapskates is like that of The Cut. The hero, Reese is just out of jail, as is his cell mate, an Italian-American who wants the money his ex-wife cheated him of. Reese, unwittingly duped into taking the rap for a cousin’s crime, continues with innocent determination to press for the money’s return, unleashing all kinds of mayhem. Suffice it to say, he re-examines his faithlessness in the course of the action.

In Jimmy Bench Press, the hero is a cop (and ex-altar boy) with an uncontrollable temper, fixated on bringing down a particularly cold-blooded con just out of jail and eager to become a “made-man” in the Mob by killing someone. There is less religious content in this one, just a positive encounter with a priest the hero knows from the old days.

Both books were exciting; the police procedural and Mob stuff authentic-feeling (Being neither a cop nor a mobster, I can say no more.) The bad guys nuanced and cut from different cloths; the good guys individualized and sympathetically drawn. As I think about my own tastes, I don’t ask much, but early on I want to like and care about the hero.The presence of a positive religious element is a bonus for me, though a definitely anti-religious slant is a show-stopper. Some authors—James D. Parker, for example, or Dennis LeHane—may take a positive attitude to the institutional church but their heroes like them have lapsed in the faith. These disappoint but don’t repel me. Stella’s books, so far, are slightly more positive than that. They are church-friendly, which is good enough for me because they are otherwise quite engaging.

As soon as the library opens, I’ll be borrowing more of Stella’s books.