Based on a true story, this gripping Mafia tale proves consistently engrossing.
This novelistic memoir prequel follows a young man with mob ties who gathers dangerous intelligence on heroin dealers and corrupt law enforcers in 1960s New York City.
Luca Gunn (Marra’s stand-in) has always been a curious child. When he loses his uncle to cancer, he is convinced something else is going on. Surely, it is something sinister. After all, another uncle died mysteriously, and his cousin disappeared shortly after nosing around mobsters. To get answers, the boy, still only a tween, takes a “listen and learn” approach, slyly eavesdropping on Mafiosos’ conversations. It’s intel Luca could have collected for a United States government agency. But he chooses instead to work under the protection of his Mafia boss uncle, Zio, and alongside a monsignor, who hands over Luca’s information “to people we know are clean.” By his late teens, Luca primarily targets heroin dealers and crooked cops and politicians. But even working covertly, he makes enemies who put him in their lines of sight. Once someone targets Luca’s beloved girlfriend, Tracy Capoletti, the young man contemplates revenge. This second volume in Marra’s trilogy begins as a coming-of-age tale. At a mere 8 years old, Luca questions the muddled parameters of good and evil, and he quickly learns to respect, not hound, girls. But much of the story describes Luca’s often perilous undertakings, as he mingles with criminals and feels a handgun pressed against his head. The author portrays Luca as a street-smart teen who can handle himself in fisticuffs. But scenes with Tracy reveal his likable, mushy side, making any threats leveled against her all the more unnerving. As in his last book, Marra aptly incorporates the historical backdrop, from President John F. Kennedy and Woodstock to the Kent State shootings. Though later years intersect with the first installment’s time period, this work enhances, rather than duplicates, its predecessor.
Based on a true story, this gripping Mafia tale proves consistently engrossing.Pub Date: March 12, 2020
ISBN: 979-8624123847
Page Count: 297
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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