Concurrently, Dorsey has personal problems he is being forced to deal with. His father, a prominent politician, and contemporary of Chick Rosenthal, is dying. Dorsey spends some time, and a great deal of mental anguish examining his feelings toward his father. He knows his father to be an amoral man who felt his political ambitions above the law. Although he preached to Carroll that he was always out to champion the rights of the common man, Carroll has serious doubts about the validity of these philosophies.

Thomas Lipinski has done several things to elevate Death in the Steel City above the plane of the ordinary private eye novel. His physical description of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area seems very true to life. Apparently, it is quite common in Pittsburgh to reserve your parking spot on residential streets by positioning a kitchen chair in the middle of the space. I guess it works for them. I can think of a few places where the spot would be taken and the chair stolen. The street names are reminiscent of the steel industry -- the intersection of Crucible and Malleable, for example.

The author has also done a most credible job describing the personalities of the main characters. Although Death in the Steel City is not the first in the series, the reader is well informed about Carroll Dorsey, his father, and Chick Rosenthal. One cannot help feeling sorry for Carroll. He has developed into a decent human being in spite of his father rather than because of him, and some of the difficulties visited upon him are because of his father’s misdeeds rather than his own.

Rosenthal is an interesting character in part because it is difficult to decide whether to like or despise him. Even the minor characters such as Nadine Jackson and her son, “Gunboats” are well enough fleshed out that they force the reader to consider the hardships they have faced in their lives.

The private eye subgenre in general tends to involve scenes of graphic violence. With the exception of one scene, the author has avoided the standard bloody confrontation. Even in the one violent scene that does occur, the description is not detailed or labored over.

That Mr. Lipinski has been able to say so much in a scant 220 page book is to his credit. There is not a lot of extraneous detail, yet the characters and the setting come alive for the reader. The reader is left with several points to consider beyond the resolving of a fairly simple plot.

--Andy Plonka