A fun, energetic, Philadelphia-set Mafia caper.
A mob-adjacent MBA attempts to avenge the death of his father in this new crime novel from Larcinese (I Detest All My Sins, 2018, etc.).
Donny Lentini’s father, Carlo, is a wannabe mobster, hungry to gain acceptance into the South Philadelphia mob. The crime family, run by Joojy Gaetano, has its fingers in legal and illegal businesses throughout the city. For would-be wiseguys like Carlo, admittance into this elite crew is worth whatever hoops Joojy asks you to jump through. “Nobody but family was trusted. Its wannabes’ wet dream was genuflecting to the young Joojy Gaetano….But when their ship came in, work orders were simple: Do the necessary.” Donny himself is content to win mobsters’ money at the poker table, but he does what he can to look after his starry-eyed father. Carlo gets a promotion, working as a delivery man between Joojy and his Columbia drug connection, Jorge Munoz. A few months into the job, Carlo goes missing, only to be discovered murdered with his hands cut off. Donny vows revenge, but first, he needs to figure out exactly who is responsible. To clear his head, he starts attending AA meetings with some old friends, who also prove helpful allies in his low-key investigation. A troubling development arises when it becomes clear that Joojy has set his sights on the restaurant owned by the family of Donny’s girlfriend, Pepper Garcia. Larcinese’s prose is full of underworld color as seen through the skeptical eyes of his protagonist narrator: “Cigarette and cigar smoke hung thick enough to draw an EPA raid. Nick wielded a wooden spoon with a long handle, stirring a five-gallon pot of spaghetti sauce….To me the whole scene was Hieronymus Bosch, yet Dad looked happy.” The portrayal of this mobbed-up world borders on parody—the Lentinis are so Catholic that Carlo lured Donny’s mother away from a life as a nun—but Larcinese leans into it with such brio that the reader doesn’t much mind. He manages to bring 1980s Philadelphia and its environs to life in all their gritty, garish glory, and the specificity of the plot—which is rooted in petty schemes and damaged psychologies—helps to ground it in reality. Larcinese is by no means reinventing the wheel, but fans of mobster novels will enjoy this messy, self-aware take on the genre.
A fun, energetic, Philadelphia-set Mafia caper.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73377-931-9
Page Count: 269
Publisher: Intrigue Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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