Mafia Prince by Phil Leonetti
To continue the Mafia kick I’ve been on lately, I checked out the Mafia subreddit for book recommendations. To a person, the guys on that site thought Mafia Prince, a book I had never heard of, was one of the best, if not THE best read on La Cosa Nostra in the United States. I thought I had heard of all the major mafia books but this one completely escaped me. I’m sure this is in part because my interest in Mafia tales is more on […]
Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mob Boss Chin Gigante by Larry McShane
69 Barrow Street/Strange Embrace by Lawrence Block
The Pope of Greenwich Village by Vincent Patrick
Unintentionally so, I read three consecutive books set in Greenwich Village (well, I guess technically three out of four as one of the books is a two-for-one and the second story isn’t set in the Village). I decided to cobble together one review of the stories since they shared this similarity… Chin *** When I’d first heard of Chin Gigante, I was more fascinated with the idea that the mob had a thriving operation in Greenwich Village, an area I’ve always associated with Bohemians and the […]
Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese
Hit and Run by Lawrence Block
The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost
After two-plus years of successfully evading the coronavirus, it finally caught up to me last week. Fortunately, my symptoms were mild (vaccinated and boosted), the only one lingering was fatigue. That and family responsibilities left me little time to write reviews this past week. So I decided to put these three here instead of my monthly dump because they were all worthy of longer reviews, two good, one damn fine. Honor Thy Father **** One of the things that made The Sopranos such an excellent television […]
Mob Girl: A Woman's Life in the Underworld by Teresa Carpenter
I’ve been meaning to read this for a few years, ever since I heard it would be made into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. But I put it off after a while because the reviews for the book itself weren’t great and the movie seems to have stalled (it was announced back in 2019 but I’m guessing Covid and/or Lawrence’s pregnancy have changed things). Anyway, since I’m on a mob kick, I decided to finally pick it up and I’m […]
Batman, Volume 3: Death in the Family by Scott Snyder
DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1 by Darwyn Cooke
Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Gordon Murphy
Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year-Secret City by Scott Snyder
Chances by Jackie Collins
Batgirl, Volume 1: Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart
Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year-Dark City by Scott Snyder
Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John "Sonny" Franzeze by S.J. Peddie
The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch
Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman
Call Me a Cab by Donald Westlake
Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen
The Bouncer by David Gordon
Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø
Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen
Concourse by S.J. Rozan
Here are the books I read in April that didn’t merit a full review… Batman, Vol. 3: Death in the Family **** Reading a Batman-v-Joker comic is perfect for April Fools Day. I loved Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls run but wasn’t sure how I’d feel about him doing a Joker story combined with the extended Batman Family (which I’ve never been interested in). But this is a good story, a creepy one that continues to burnish Snyder’s credentials on this series. DC: The New Frontier, Volume […]
City on Fire by Don Winslow
I kinda knew what to expect with this Don Winslow novel going in and yet, I still wound up having a good time. Winslow is famous for taking historical crime events and melding them into fictional tales. He did it with the history of the West Coast mob in The Winter of Frankie Machine, one of my favorite crime reads of the last few years. Here he draws inspiration from the Boston-Providence mob and their wars of the 90s post-Patriarca. Oh and he decided to tell […]
