Thick as Thieves

Although its pages, littered with made guys and elaborate hits, follows the misadventures of a dedicated crook on a job gone bad, this debut crime story doesn't make it into the Eugene Izzi/Elmore Leonard league. Mackin, a professional thief who agrees to steal food stamps from a printer, is cheated by the black crimelord in charge of the heist, who then sets two crooked cops on his tail. Left with no option but to waste the cops and flee, Mackin vows vengeance. As he delivers on his threat, shady businesses are hit, cars burn and innocents die. A career cop follows the action, as does the mobster who put Mackin in touch with the traitorous crime lord and now is sorry. Although the mobster is in Chicago, the job is in an unnamed nearby city and some of the subsequent action may be in either place. Readers will have further trouble locating themselves in relation to the sharp-edged, unsympathetic Mackin, a rogue who is redeemed by neither the fierce streetwise morality of Izzi's characters nor the gallows humor of Leonard's. (Feb.)