Few novelists convey as much of a sense of really knowing how the world works as Don Winslow. His epic Cartel trilogy, one of the finest achievements of 21st-century crime fiction, is the fruit of years of research and legwork, and tells you everything you need to know to understand the abysmal failure of the “war on drugs” waged by successive US governments.

A bald description of his latest novel makes it sound like something far more confected and whimsical: an account of a 1980s gang war in Rhode Island that follows the structure of The Iliad. But Homer and Winslow are brothers in realism, it turns out: the old tale of men allowing themselves to be led by greed, lust, petulance and over-sensitivity into embarking on pointless wars and waging them badly fits Winslow’s characters like a glove.

The book begins with two mobs, one Italian and one Irish, co-existing peacefully in adjacent towns. But then one of the Irish lads nicks the girlfriend of one of the Italians – a realtor called Pam, the novel’s Helen of Troy. She turns out to be the face that launched a thousand clips, as generations-old enmities resurface (“You heard about Irish Alzheimer’s?” says one character, “They forget everything but the grudges”) and the body count explodes.

There is great fun to be had from Winslow’s ingenious handling of the Homeric set pieces (the Wooden Horse, the desecration of Hector’s body) and like Homer he is simultaneously able to evoke the pity and waste of a violent conflict and relish it as a spectacle. Despite the originality of his approach, there is something ersatz about the novel – the tropes and stock characters are too familiar. But this is still a superior example of the gangster genre, and I’m looking forward to the Odyssean wanderings in the sequel trailed at the end.

City on Fire is published by HarperCollins at £20. To order your copy for £16.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk