During the '80s building boom in New York, Billy Adare was a sandhog (tunneler). He attended school at night in the hope of getting a law degree. His brother, Paddy, was an enforcer for Jack Tierney, who ran the construction racket in the West Side.

The author describes the difficulty these sandhogs had with the dust, building safety and poor working conditions. Most of them were Irish and the Mob wanted to replace them with newly immigrated Poles, pay less and pocket the difference.

When a union rep is beaten to death by Tierney's crazed brother, Billy's friends ask him to check with his brother, Paddy, to see if they can find who is strong-arming them.

The author does a nice job in describing New York of the '80s, with the music, the politics and views of the time. There is a great deal of violence in the book and much of it is aimed at the sandhogs who wanted nothing more than to make a living.

Billy is a nice character and represents the author's theme of a dwindling race, the Irish in the Bronx and their struggle to better themselves.

Well done and interesting. ( )

A story set in the mid-1980's about Sandhogs, construction workers who build tunnels, with a mix union-management strife, corrupt politicians, Irish gangsters, and family squabbles turned violent. It was a breezy read full of violence and machismo, but not so much to insult one's intelligence. ( )