RIDE A TIGER

by Harold Livingston ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 21, 1986

Real-life top mobster Meyer Lansky, a thinly veiled minor player in Puzo's The Godfather, takes center stage in this rich, exciting gangster saga, a roman á clef from the author of The Coasts of the Earth. From his first job as a 12-year-old lookout for a Lower East Side crap game, Leo Gorodetsky, a small, feisty, and brilliant Jew, realizes that his future and fortune lie in organized crime. After a prison stint on a bum rap and subsequent WW I service, Leo pulls off a daring coup: he steals a shipment of whiskey belonging to Arnie Steinberger, the ""King of Bootleggers,"" and in a massive show of chutzpah returns the shipment. An impressed Arnie takes on Leo and his sidekicks--headstrong pal Harry Wise and Italian hotshot Sal Bracci--as junior partners. The trio enjoy wild success as they take over rumrunning in the Northeast, and then merge forces with the Italian ""Five Families"" to form ""the Alliance,"" a national racketeering syndicate. Leo expands the Alliance's grasp, first to a nascent Las Vegas, then to Battista's Cuba. Always aware of his Jewish heritage, a middle-aged Leo gets involved in Zionism, running guns for a young Israel. His armament deals win the friendship of Golda Meir and pay off when he must flee to Israel after liasons with the Kennedys and Jimmy Hoffa (here called Thomas Stohlmeyer) sour and a warrant is issued for his arrest. American pressure eventually forces Israel to expel Leo; after flying to several nations in an unsuccessful bid for haven, he returns to the US. There, charges against him are dropped when the prosecutions' chief witness accidentally dies; but, weakened by a series of heart attacks, Leo cannot fight back as rival mobsters kill all his henchmen in a bloody gang war and force him to retire to Florida. Livingston sidesteps moral issues, concentrating on first-rate storytelling, No letdown here; this is an enthralling, wide-canvas tale packed with colorful characters and action galore.

Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: FICTION