By Tom deignan

FROM Boston to Chicago, from Hell’s Kitchen to a fictional enclave in Rhode Island, Irish crime is all the rage these days.

All these years after the Irish had supposedly melted into the great American ethnic pot, it seems people are still fascinated with both real life and fictional Irish troublemakers.

In recent days, the new Showtime series Brother-hood has gotten a lot of attention.

Brotherhood, which is featured in this week’s “Craic” section, stars Irish Hollywood veteran Fionnula Flanagan as Rose Caffee and is set in an Irish Rhode Island neighborhood known as “The Hill.” Brotherhood, which has received rave reviews as well as comparisons to The Sopranos, explores the tension between two of Rose’s sons.

Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke) is a family man who has made a name for himself in politics. In the show, Tommy’s brother Mike (Jason Isaacs), a known gangster, returns to the neighborhood with plans of his own.

Though set in Rhode Island, Brotherhood bears more than a passing resemblance to the real-life stories of Boston’s Irish Bulger brothers - one a politician, the other a gangster.

Speaking of the brothers Bulger, if you think Brotherhood has kicked off some sort of Irish crime trend then you obviously have not been reading of late. Four books about the Boston Irish mob hit bookstores earlier this year.

There was Kevin Weeks’ Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger’s Irish Mob (Regan Books). While promoting the book, Weeks blasted fellow gangster/author John (Red) Shea, who penned Rat Bastards: The Life and Times of South Boston’s Most Honorable Irish Mobster. (William Morrow)

“He’s exaggerating his role,” Weeks said of Shea in The New York Times.

Shea spent over a decade in jail on drug charges. He responded by blasting Weeks, whose own jail sentence was cut because he cooperated with prosecutors.

“I don’t think any rat deserves any publicity,” said Shea.

Also published recently is The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century (Warner Books) by Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, exploring Bulger and his brother Billy, a former state senator and University of Massachusetts president.

The final entrance in all of this is Patrick Nee’s A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection (Steerforth).

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, a real-life story of corruption has put a crusading prosecutor who is the son of Irish immigrants on a collision course with the son of an Irish American political legend.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald — who made headlines for steering the recent CIA leak case in Washington — is claiming victory after a jury convicted four city officials on charges of corruption.

Fitzgerald, whose father was a Manhattan doorman, has alleged that Chicago’s City Hall runs a “machine,” in which favors are doled out only to those who play by the administration’s rules.

Chicago’s City Hall, of course, is currently occupied by Richard Daley, son of the king-making former mayor who bore the same name.

As The New York Times recently wrote of the Chicago corruption scandal, “The convictions have left many people wondering how much closer to Mayor Richard M. Daley a federal investigation that has been rising up the ranks of City Hall might go, and what consequences it could have as he faces re-election for a fifth term next year.”

Daley’s father Richard J., of course, was a six-term mayor and quintessential Irish American big city politician.

Will Richard Junior’s path eventually collide with Fitzgerald’s? We’ll see.

As if all of this weren’t enough, the new fall TV season includes The Black Donnellys, a drama about — you guessed it — four Irish brothers and their involvement in organized crime in the historically Irish neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s West Side.

What can we make of all this? Have Irish American bad guys been overlooked for so long that only now these stories are bubbling up to the surface from the murky bottom?

Or are Irish Americans now making the same mistake some other ethnic groups have made by celebrating the sinners among them?

Never mind. I’d better watch what I say.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net)