Dead City is a novel written by Shane Stevens. Set in 1970s Jersey City, it follows various members of the New Jersey mob such as Charlie Flowers, an unfortunate mafia grunt, Harry Strega, an emotionally stunted recruit, and Joe Zucco, the ruthless and profitable mob head, as they try to stay rich and alive.
Dead City contains examples of:
- Crapsack World: The setting is consistently dour and miserable. Most descriptions of the city are harsh and unflattering. The characters are either miserable, paranoid, struck down by bad luck, or too crazy to truly enjoy life. Aside from those at the top, the mob life is incredibly demoralizing for most characters.
- Downer Ending: Even though Zucco wins against Machine, he ends up ordering the deaths of Charlie and Harry to remove all traces of the crime to him.
- Ephebophile: Zucco ends up paying a thirteen year old girl to help implicate one of his rivals.
- Evil Pays Better: Both Flowers and Strega become better off after taking their jobs seriously. They still remain obviously evil.
- Hope Spot: Flowers and Strega pull off their final job and escape right before it's revealed that Zucco ordered their deaths.
- Jerkass: Every major character has shades of this with notable examples of unwarranted bigotry, homophobia, and misogyny.
- Karma Houdini: By the end, the man who successfully kills his way to the top of the Jersey City mob walks off scot-free.
- The Mafia: A fictional version of it with Italians in leadership roles.
- Properly Paranoid: Most of the mobsters are constantly looking over their shoulder and covering their tracks - often with deadly results.
- Rape as Drama: Strega had ended up raping a girl in Vietnam years before the events of the novel. He never talks about it to others and it remains one of his most sour memories.
- The Sociopath: Quite a few. Ginger stands out for his nonchalant attitude towards his line of work and the death of Charlie's brother.
- Villainous Incest: While gloating over Flowers' dead brother, Ginger mentions sleeping with his own sister.
- Villain Protagonist: All of the followed protagonists are crooked killers in organized crime with very unsavory personality traits.
