Blood on Blood - Frank Zafiro and Jim Wilsky

Mick and Jerzy Sawyer are half-brothers in Chicago, but there's no brotherly love between these two. Jerzy is a career criminal, Mick is a disgraced former cop who went to prison because he took the fall for other cops. The two of them basically hate each other . . . but they're forced to work together when their dying convict father puts them on the trail of a stolen necklace and earrings worth millions of dollars. More complications ensue when Jerzy finds himself in the middle of a gang war and both brothers (wouldn't you know it?) fall for the same beautiful blonde.

BLOOD ON BLOOD is the first novel collaboration by Frank Zafiro and Jim Wilsky. Zafiro has written other crime novels and short stories and Wilsky has authored quite a few short stories. They've joined forces here to produce an excellent hardboiled crime thriller. The narration switches back and forth between Mick and Jerzy, and also between past and present tense, and while those are both techniques I often don't care for, Zafiro and Wilsky make them work very well.

They've also written a sequel to this novel, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS, that's out already, and I plan to read it as well, but I recommend you start with BLOOD ON BLOOD. If you enjoy fast-paced, gritty crime fiction, I think you'll like it a lot.