Suicide? A mob hit?
His best books are hardboiled, no-nonsense, superior pulp fiction, in the vivid setting of Hegewisch, the Chicago blue-collar neighbourhood where Izzi grew up, son of a small-time mafioso.
With a cast list of low-life grifters, hookers, mobsters and ordinary people bowed down or broken by life, Izzi’s books don’t compare to those of that other chronicler of Chicago crime, Elmore Leonard, but they’re never less than gripping.
But the story of Izzi’s death is perhaps more compelling than his writing.
esquire.com/entertainment/books/a36168227/eugene-izzi-crime-novelist-death
