DEAD MAN'S LEGACY

In Bono’s novel, a bank manager seizes an opportunity to steal a significant amount of cash from his own bank, leading to unforeseen consequences.

In 1964, Sal Marchetti is a man without much professional ambition. Well into his 50s, he’s an assistant manager at Morgan Trust Bank in Brooklyn, New York, barely keeping his family afloat with his meager paycheck. One day, the bank receives a considerable delivery of cash, but after Sal is unable to open the vault to secure it, he hides it. When three amateur thieves hold up the place, he purposely misreports what they stole. Whitey Aparicio, Hector Maldonado, and Junior Saez abscond with just $50,000, while Sal declares $300,000 stolen, taking a quarter-million for himself. The police investigate the robbery and murder—Hector shot and killed security guard Adolph Werner—and quickly track down the perpetrators, but they’re astonished to discover the discrepancy between the recovered cash and Sal’s report, which complicates the anxious bank manager’s situation. The central premise of the book—that morality suffers when desperation meets opportunity—is a powerful one that Bono intelligently explores. He effectively shows how Sal clearly didn’t think through the ramifications of his impulsive choice—and when things go very wrong, it falls upon his family to wrestle with the aftermath. The author’s writing is clear but stylistically bland, and the plot loses focus when a subplot involving the mob is introduced: Sal’s wife, Laura, is the daughter of Gambino crime family underboss Johnny Papa. However, the author ultimately delivers an enthralling look at the sheer unpredictability of human affairs.

A thoughtful and often engrossing crime novel.