A complex Mafia thriller with plenty of engaging characters.
The son of a reformed mobster becomes entangled in a power struggle between a Mafia family and a new, unknown criminal element in Covelli’s (Tom Fool & Three More, 2002) thriller.
In mid-1990s Buffalo, N.Y., when a seemingly innocuous soup-kitchen regular turns up dead— ice-picked to death—Tasio Pecoranera asks his mobster friends to help identify some Mafioso-like suspects he’d seen around the time of the murder. At first, the killing appears to be part of a drug-trade war between the Mafia and a new crew, but it soon becomes clear that it’s a war for information. Evidently, whoever takes control of the forthcoming hybrid-car business—and a liberal mayoral candidate—will wield the most power in Buffalo. The novel’s initial murder mystery is merely a lure to pull Tasio into the spotlight, as Covelli’s thriller teems with colorful characters, including Tasio’s menacing uncle, Carlo, who employs a man named Tommy the Bruiser and a thug known simply as “the Monster” or “the Giant.” The whodunit is soon set aside (though eventually resolved) in favor of numerous elaborate subplots, including another murder, a disappearance, and characters seeking hybrid-car funding from a wealthy family and Japanese investors. (There’s also ambiguity surrounding Tasio’s mother’s alleged suicide.) Much of the story is relayed via dialogue, and Covelli’s prose itself often resembles playful banter—for example, an affluent man is described as having “one and a half tons of fun” financing Carlo’s corrupt schemes. However, when Covelli introduces Tasio’s love interest, she arrives so late in the book that the relationship doesn’t have much impact. Readers may want to skip the “List of Characters” section at the beginning, as it reveals some specific plot points.
A complex Mafia thriller with plenty of engaging characters.Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984888207
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Luna Court Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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