Mafia Summer
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
One a Sicilian Hell's Kitchen gang leader, the other a sickly but brilliant Orthodox Jewish boy who lives next door, Vinny Vesta and Sidney Butcher meet on a fire escape during the blistering New York City summer of 1950. Their friendship develops over the course of a summer that will change Vinny's fortunes forever, at a cost he could never have imagined. Based on a true story, Mafia Summer brilliantly captures a pivotal moment in Mafia history and in the lives of the teenagers caught up by the Mob.
"Influenced more by Billy Bathgate than by The Godfather...Sweet, affectionate, and bloody: a glance backward to a well-spent youth."-Kirkus Reviews
"E. Duke Vincent hits the target dead center with this first novel set on the bloody streets of Hell's Kitchen. A mini-epic, complete with a full-scale crime war, Mafia Summer remains a detailed tale of friendship and of the best kind of loyalty. A masterful performance."-Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Paradise City
"One of the best books on the mafia I have ever read. Right up there with The Godfather."-New York Times bestselling author Jack Higgins
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hell's Kitchen in the summer of 1950 offers a ripe setting for a rousing crime novel, but Vincent's debut is stilted and amateurish compared to category classics. Against the backdrop of a mob war between real-life gangsters Frank Costello and his challenger, Vito Genovese, we meet 18-year-old protagonist Vinny Vesta, leader of the Icemen, a street-gang of "five Sicilians, one black, and an Irishman." With the blessing of Vinny's father, Gino, a caporegime in the Mangano family, the boys embark on a string of minor capers. Soon, they're double-crossed by troublemaker Gee-gee Petrone, and fatalities result when the Icemen attempt to turn the tables. (Vinny's steamy affair with a gorgeous 29-year-old hatcheck girl ends abruptly when she winds up dead in a Dumpster.) To flesh out Vinny's sensitive, intellectual side, Vincent also hangs the story on the narrator's friendship with his Jewish neighbor Sidney Butcher, a sickly bookworm who improbably tutors Vinny in art and literature and even takes him to synagogue. Though TV writer and producer Vincent has researched his crime history, the novel's awkwardly shifting point of view, anachronisms and cartoonish violence make for a frustrating read.
