WISEGUYS IN LOVE

A rollicking farce—and first novel—exploring the disorganized side of a New York City family of organized criminals. The trouble begins when Lisa Johnson's hateful boss, Smug magazine publisher Henry Foster Morgan, fires faithful, nearly retired Rosa Morelli from accounting, and Rosa demands that her nephew and godson Tony Macarelli kill ``that sonofabeech'' in revenge. Thick- necked, thick-witted Tony's boss Solly Soltano, ``New York's best- dressed don,'' arranges to have Tony take his protÇgÇ Michael Bonello, a law-school dropout whom Tony's gotten some work with the family, along on the hit to pull the trigger as his formal initiation—but things naturally don't go according to plan. Paying a commiseration call on Mrs. Morelli, Lisa runs into Michael and Tony, who take her to Henry's office for his appointment book, then disagree about whether to kill her, and finally find themselves saddled with her when she escapes from the office, can't get either the police or Henry to take her warnings seriously, and runs over to the apartment where they've staked him out. Instead of killing Henry, Michael and Tony take Lisa to Brooklyn for another hit—a wayward family accountant whom Lisa, not squeamish Michael, ends up shooting—and from then on in it's only a matter of time before Lisa and Michael end up enjoying a romantic evening in a Plaza suite, and all the right guys finally get killed. Newcomer Criscuolo can't quite sustain the frantic plotting for his story's whole length, but it's a lot of fun watching him try.