Gangsterland
A Novel
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4.2 • 26 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"[An] exciting and darkly funny crime novel." —C. Moon Read, Las Vegas Weekly, 1 of Our 20 Favorite Books of the Past Twenty Years
Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, known for his ability to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first–ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin.
A few surgeries and some intensive training later, and Sal Cupertine is gone, disappeared into the identity of Rabbi David Cohen. Leading his growing congregation in Las Vegas, overseeing the population and the temple and the new cemetery, Rabbi Cohen feels his wicked past slipping away from him, surprising even himself as he spouts quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament. Yet, as it turns out, the Mafia isn't quite done with him yet. Soon the new cemetery is being used as both a money and body–laundering scheme for the Chicago family. And that rogue FBI agent on his trail, seeking vengeance for the murder of his three fellow agents, isn't going to let Sal fade so easily into the desert.
Gangsterland is the wickedly dark and funny new novel by a writer at the height of his power—a morality tale set in a desert landscape as ruthless and barren as those who inhabit it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Complex characters with understandable motivations distinguish this highly unusual crime novel from Goldberg (Living Dead Girl). When a sample of some particularly fine heroin causes Sal Cupertine, a hit man for the Chicago Family, to abandon his usual careful methods and execute three undercover FBI agents in a downtown hotel, Sal is certain that the Mafia will make him disappear. What he doesn't expect is that, months later, after multiple plastic surgeries and much study of Judaic holy texts, he will reemerge into the light of day in Las Vegas as Rabbi David Cohen. Back in Chicago, FBI agent Jeff Hopper is determined to track Sal down and make him pay for killing his team of agents. All Sal really wants to do is get to his wife, Jennifer, and their toddler son, William, and then disappear. Goldberg injects Talmudic wisdom and a hint of Springsteen into the workings of organized crime and FBI investigative techniques and makes it all work splendidly.
