The Fools in Town Are on Our Side by Ross Thomas

The Fools in Town Are on Our Side by Ross Thomas, 385 pages, thriller.
The late Ross Thomas has been one of my favorite novelists since I wandered into Big Sleep Books in the late 80s and had him recommended to me by the owner, who has also passed on.
Lucifer Dye, late of an unnamed government agency, is hired as a contractor to take a corrupt town, one run by the mob, and ruin so absolutely that the citizens will have no choice but to throw all of the bums out and start governing themselves responsibly. He does an excellent job, fomenting a gang war, exposing the sins of all the town fathers, and getting his cohort appointed chief of police. He does this by making deals with all the principal bad-guys, telling them all he will double-cross the others, and broadly hinting that they will be double-crossed as well. I would say that this was not one of Thomas's best, but still it is better than most thrillers being written today. Like all of Thomas's books it is well-written and unpredictable. A fun read.