This book is a very exciting thriller, showing Chicago street life in a realistic manner. The high point is the burglary of the Sears Tower! As always, Izzi portrays his characters in true to life fashion.

This has been the first book of Izzi's that I've read. It's just amazing. That's the only way I can describe it. His characters and situations are so detailed you can see everything as you read it. His writing style is, in my opinion, unmatchable. The way he interlocks multiple stories and yet keeps them seperate, even though you know they're related, is awesome. This is the best book I've read in a long time.

This is such a good read. It is such a shame that this is the last we will ever read of Eugene Izzi's work. The story is riveting and the characters are fascinating and so richly developed. What a wonderful series these characters could have been. This is truly a story left untold as these characters are absolutely teeming with life!

This is a fascinating story about psychiatry, crime, relationships, serial killers and the police department. Any mystery fan should love this book. Well worth your time. It's just a shame Mr. Izzi is not around to write more winners like this one.

The first half of this novel (the Chicago half) are the most intense as any crime/suspense novel you'll read. The characters are vividly drawn; Izzi has a keen sense of place (mob-connected, underground Chicagoland). The tensions are palpable and running just under the surface of every interaction. Great page-turning stuff.

Unfortunately, the second half gets a little too bogged down in sentiment. I guess I'm strange, I don't feel everything has to be resolved in one neat bow. When the action moves to Atlantic City, the writing seems to lose some of its edge.

Still a great read, by one of America's truly underappreciated writers. We lost a great talent when Eugene Izzi died.

Eugene Izzi's style is as fresh today as it was when he first wrote this novel. His characters are believable, authentic, and interesting. A great read!

There have been three novels written over the last five years with the title A Matter of Honor. Eugene Izzi's story under that title deals with Chicago in the throes of racial conflict and features a diverse cast of characters both black and white whose personal agendas intersect in the tragedy of interracial murder and rioting. The central figures, a white homicide detective named Del Greco, brilliant at his job but emotionally remote from an upbringing in foster homes, and his partner Ellis Turner, a black detective with a loving family who has managed to maintain persepctive on race despite facing prejudice daily, are pitted against one another after Del Greco is accussed of racial prejudice and implicated in the murder of a young black who had murdered Del Greco's niece. The complex plot involves a background of black political machination, drug dealers buying influence, crooked lawyers with Mafia ties, a white supremicist organization called the ACK (Ayrian Christian Kinsman), sexual politics among the police, murder for hire, friendship, family ties, and enough quick turns to make the reader's head spin. Ultimately the plot - especially in its denouement - is so complicated and strained as to be unbelievable, but this does not detract from the book's power. The character's, even minor ones, are so good and so believably drawn, that the reader just has to know what happens to them.

The book does tend to be somewhat wordy, spending a lot of time probbing various character's thoughts and feelings. But this is handled very well and the information that we get is key to both understanding who these people are and why they behave as they do. This is, despite being a mystery/thriller, a very thoughtful and intelligent book about human emotions and the strengths and weaknesses of the human spirit. I highly recommend it.

I am still so sad he is gone. I have read all of Eugene Izzi's books and the thought that there will be no more is tragic. I still think his best work is the early stuff, like The Take, Booster, King of Hustlers and the others. Eugene Izzi, you are missed.

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.

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.

This is a very powerful experience. It brings you into not just the surface action but the thoughts and feelings of a serial killer, and the cop who tracks him down. A very good, thought provoking read. Well worth it.