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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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