This is the first book I've read by Dini, and I ended up liking it pretty well. I definitely recognize something in his style from Batman: The Animated Series; the tone is similar, even if the violence is more severe and the consequences more dire. The wild, zany Gotham full of colorful characters that I loved in the show comes to life again in the pages in this volume.
The book takes an almost slice-of-life approach, moving from one villain to the next, lingering longer on some and just briefly touching on others. It really begins to dig into Gotham's underbelly and show you what's going on when the batfamily isn't around. But despite this feeling, there is a clear plot--the main thread follows Hush and his efforts to take over Bruce Wayne's life. There's also a thread about Black Mask, the Penguin, and Zsasz. But amid that, we also get fun moments like Harley Quinn attempting to go shopping and the Great White Shark making a "business deal."
Generally, I'm not a big fan of stories about villains, but Dini really brings that special something that makes me appreciate them. I also love how he manages to connect all these wild characters to the very streets of Gotham; they reflect the landscape, and the landscape reflects them. Dini drives that point home especially in the last of arc of the book, which is about the Broker, a real estate agent that specializes in matching super villains with the perfect themed locations for their hideouts. His story illustrates the point that the very history and nature of Gotham, down to its very architecture, have made the city what it is today, super villains and all. In this book, Gotham city is practically a character in its own right, and I loved that.
The biggest downside for me, though, was that I don't think I'm a big fan of how Dini writes the good guys. Both Dick and Damian are in this book, but you'd hardly know it. There's not much very identifiable about their characters--Damian says a couple clever things and threatens violence a few times, but Dick is the most generic I've ever seen him. A few members of the Justice League show up too, and they're just as boring. All the charm of this book belongs to the villains, and it seems there wasn't any left for the batfamily.
I also wasn't a big fan of the first couple issues about Hush--these are actually Detective Comics and Batman issues, and they don't really fit with the whole "streets of Gotham" theme the rest of the book has going, even if they set up some important plot.
Lastly, I wasn't actually a big fan of the art. I found Nguyen's faces to be oddly flat, unexpressive, and sometimes indistinguishable.
Overall though, I really liked what Dini managed to do in this book. Streets of Gotham is certainly aptly named, and I'm looking forward to the next volume.