Eugene Izzi Books in Order
Browse Eugene Izzi books in order, with quick summaries, pen-name titles, Chicago crime background, series notes, and a simple guide to where to start.
Last updated: July 9, 2026
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Publication Order
19 books
The Take
by Eugene Izzi
1987
Ex-cop, ex-con Fabe Falletti takes on Latin drug dealers, mob heavyweights, and a relentless narc in the Chicago streets he knows too well. It is a fast, bruising debut built on nerve, bad choices, and survival.
Bad Guys
by Eugene Izzi
1988
Undercover Chicago cop Jimbo Marino helps make a big mob case, then is forced into the public eye. That mistake brings a vicious old enemy back into his life, and turns the hunt into a personal showdown.
The Eighth Victim
by Eugene Izzi
1988
When a nun is murdered in a South Side church, Detective Vic Perry takes the case hard, especially because his girlfriend witnessed the crime. The investigation pushes through fear, faith, and the city's roughest corners.
King of the Hustlers
by Eugene Izzi
1989
Small-time hustler Tone Nello is always looking for the score that will finally move him up. Instead he draws the attention of bigger, meaner operators, and the streets start closing in around every gamble he makes.
Invasions
by Eugene Izzi
1990
Master burglar Frank Vale wants out of the life, but his brother's release from prison sets off a chain of demands from mobsters, white supremacists, and crooked cops. Going straight starts to look impossible as the bodies pile up.
The Booster
by Eugene Izzi
1990
Vince Martin, once a top thief, is reduced to boosting cars until mob warfare offers him one last spectacular job. To pull it off, he has to cross a frozen Chicago skyline, outwit killers, and decide whether he still has a way back.
The Prime Roll
by Eugene Izzi
1990
Chicago gambler Lano Branka is riding a rare lucky streak until he crosses the wrong mobster and gets shipped to Atlantic City. There he finds himself trapped between gangsters, a murder setup, and a cop bent on revenge.
Prowlers
by Eugene Izzi
1991
Fresh out of prison, burglar Robert 'Catfeet' Millard learns that a gambling debt to mobster Darrin Favore has grown into a death sentence. To survive, he turns to the few people he loves, and drags them into a bitter street war.
Tribal Secrets
by Eugene Izzi
1992
TV star Babe Hill thinks fame has put distance between him and the mob-tainted family that shaped him. It hasn't. A Chicago godfather, a dangerous stalker, and relatives with their own plans pull him into a messy fight he can't sidestep.
Tony's Justice
by Eugene Izzi
1993
Former cop Tony Just has made a brutal mission of hunting child predators and rapists. When ex-con Antek Bando turns his violence toward someone from Tony's old circle, the chase becomes personal and far more dangerous.
Special Victims
by Eugene Izzi
1994
Lt. Tony Tulio runs a battered Chicago unit that investigates rich victims, and he becomes obsessed with a killer known as the Collector. As Jake Phillips moves toward the squad, the case exposes organ trafficking, police corruption, and the city's moral rot.
Bulletin From The Street
by Eugene Izzi
1995
Izzi drops into a rough Chicago landscape where fear, anger, and old grudges spill into violence. It is a street-level crime novel, more interested in pressure and survival than neat answers.
Mr. X
by Eugene Izzi
1995
Jake Phillips and his partner, Alex 'Mondo' Mondello, hunt a killer linked to murdered cops, a phone-sex operation, and a sadist known as Mr. X. The deeper Jake digs, the harder it becomes to know whether he can even trust the man beside him.
Jaded
by Eugene Izzi
1996
Jake Phillips once looked like one of Chicago Homicide's rising stars. Now his marriage is cracking, his badge is at risk, and he has to decide whether exposing corruption inside the department is worth losing everything else.
Players
by Eugene Izzi
1996
A dark Chicago crime story about ambition, betrayal, and survival among the city's dealmakers, hustlers, and predators. Every alliance feels temporary, and every move pushes someone closer to violence.
Spent Force
by Eugene Izzi
1996
Jake Phillips is already worn down when the death of a small-time hustler points toward corrupt cops. To get at the truth, he has to keep working the case even as the job threatens what is left of his career and personal life.
A Matter of Honor
by Eugene Izzi
1997
A racially charged murder and a drive-by shooting send shock waves through Chicago, exposing the divide between the city's polished image and its angrier streets. Izzi turns the case into a tense look at loyalty, police pressure, and a city close to the edge.
The Criminalist
by Eugene Izzi
1998
Twenty years after Nancy Moran's murder shattered her family, a new killing echoes the old case and drags the Morans back into suspicion. Detective Dom DiGrazio has to sort copycat clues, buried resentments, and police politics before more lives are wrecked.
Safe Harbor
by Eugene Izzi
1999
Mark Torrence looks like a steady Chicago family man and youth counselor, but he is really Tommy Torelli, a former mob insider in witness protection. When a relentless hit man finally finds him, his buried past becomes the only thing that might save his family.
Where should I start?
If you want his first street-level crime novels: The Take → Bad Guys → The Booster
If you want his strongest character-driven books: Prowlers → The Criminalist → Safe Harbor
If you want the Jake Phillips police stories: Special Victims → Mr. X → Jaded
If you want gamblers, hustlers, and mob pressure: King of the Hustlers → The Prime Roll → Invasions
Author bio
Eugene Izzi was born in Chicago on March 23, 1953, and grew up in Hegewisch, the working-class neighborhood on the city's far southeast side, near the Indiana line and the steel mills. Chicago stayed at the center of his life, and it stayed at the center of his fiction.
He wrote the city like somebody who knew what its smoke, noise, and pressure felt like up close.
His early life was rough. Izzi left high school, joined the Army, and earned his high school equivalency during his service. Back in Chicago, he worked in the steel mills on the South Side, married, and had children. He also struggled hard, with drinking and brushes with the law, long before he found a steadier path as a novelist.
Writing seems to have started as a way through that chaos. By his own telling, there was a point when he realized his early pages were too wrapped up in self-pity. What changed his work was looking outward, toward the people he knew from mill neighborhoods, bars, sidewalks, and back rooms. Those were the people who began to fill his books.
That shift gave him his material.
After years of rejection, his first novel, The Take, was published in 1987. He followed it fast with books like Bad Guys, The Booster, King of the Hustlers, The Prime Roll, Prowlers, and Tony's Justice. The pace was intense, and so was the work. His stories usually live in a hard Chicago world of cops, ex-cons, gamblers, mob figures, and working people trying to stay upright under pressure. Several of those books earned Edgar nominations, including The Booster, King of the Hustlers, and Tony's Justice.
Readers who click with Izzi tend to like the same things. The novels move quickly, but they are not slick. They have a bruised, street-level feel, and they make room for people who are frightened, proud, compromised, or one bad choice from disaster. Prowlers is often singled out for its emotional weight, The Criminalist for its grim family mystery, and Safe Harbor for the way it mixes witness protection suspense with ordinary family life. Under the pen name Nick Gaitano, he also wrote the Jake Phillips police novels, beginning with Special Victims and continuing with Mr. X and Jaded.
A publishing dispute forced him to use that other name for a time, but it did not slow him down much. He kept writing about Chicago as a place where loyalty could save you, ruin you, or do both at once. His books rarely sort people into saints and monsters. More often, they ask what somebody does when every option is bad.
Izzi died in Chicago on December 7, 1996, at the age of forty-three. The strange circumstances of his death drew a lot of attention, and still do, but they can also overshadow the work itself. The last part of his career arrived after his death, with A Matter of Honor, The Criminalist, and the American publication of Safe Harbor bringing new readers to him.
What lasts is the voice. Not polished, not fancy, but direct and stubborn. If you pick up Eugene Izzi now, you are getting crime novels written by someone who knew the city from the inside and kept finding human stories in its hardest places.
Edited by
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