A review by bookbitch
The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey

Danny and Evan grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a working class neighborhood. They became partners in crime, stealing cars and doing small time burglaries, until Evan escalated the stakes with a pawn shop robbery gone bad. Danny managed to get away but Evan does hard time; while Evan's in prison, Danny's been scared straight. He's a project manager for a small construction company, has a nice apartment and a great girlfriend - as long as he stays straight. So when Evan gets paroled seven years later and wants to renew their partnership, Danny isn't interested. But Evan feels like Danny owes him, and prison certainly hasn't softened him any. In fact, it's turned him into Danny's worst nightmare. The tension escalates as Evan starts putting the screws to Danny, and somehow Sakey keeps ratcheting it on up until the last page. This is an old story, but it is told so well that it feels new. This debut has garnered starred reviews and raves galore, drawing comparisons to Dennis Lehane's masterpiece, Mystic River, as well as the writing styles of George Pelecanos and Joseph Finder, leaving me wondering: how can any book live up to all that hype? Read it and find out - because it did.