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Omerta
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Product Description
Omerta, the Sicilian code of silence, has been the cornerstone of the Mafia's sense of honour for centuries. Born in the Sicilian hills, omerta carried the Mafia through a century of change, but now at the century's end it is becoming a relic from a bygone age. Honour may be silent - but money talks. New York - a mob boss is assassinated and no one will talk. His nephew and the head of the city's FBI both launch investigations into the murder. But silence spreads like a contagion: the silence of rival gangs, the silence of crooked bankers; even the silence of the courts. However, the world of the Mafia is one without integrity, and riven with greed. And when money starts to talk...
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #21676 in Books
- Published on: 2001-05-03
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 432 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
A New York mob boss is assassinated but no one will speak to the police. His nephew and the FBI both launch investigations into the murder. However, the world of the Mafia is one without integrity and is riven by greed. At the end of the 20th century the Mafia code of omert [silence] is becoming a relic from a bygone age. Honour may be silent - but money talks.The late Mario 'The Godfather' Puzo's final compelling Mafia novel.
Trying to analyse exactly what it is about Mario Puzo's posthumous novel - Omerta - that makes it such a page-turner is quite a challenge. It reads like a screenplay with plenty of directorial hints and scene-settings. Probably because of the huge success of The Godfather (for which Puzo wrote all three screenplays) it is impossible not to read this as a Hollywood blockbuster, but plenty of other novels are written these days with an eye on the silver screen and not all are quite so readable. Another curiosity is that the writing itself is often clumsy, seeming hurried and like a poor translation of the original. There is no elegance, no beautifully crafted sentences. Yet despite this the book is an enjoyable, engaging read. What Puzo does extremely well is draw his characters. The sketches are instantly recognisable and authentic and his central character, Astorre Zeno, is straight from the pages of romantic fiction and action/adventure. Young, good-looking, hiding his steely resolve behind a happy-go-lucky facade, compassionate yet feared and respected by the Mafia. Groomed from birth to become a traditional Don in a modern world, he embodies all the contradictions Puzo's novel deals with. Omerta is the Sicilian code of silence, the basis of the Mafia's sense of honour and the source of its power. In the modern world few people retain respect for this honour. The mafia stands for torture, theft, vengeance, murder and mercilessness. There is a yearning in the novel, embodied in the character of Astorre, for the old code and the simple, peasant life of Sicily. The heat, the sea, the olive groves, the good food, the natural order. Despite the violence, the confusion, the obvious weaknesses in the plot, the sheer pace of this novel carries you through. But it is the love for what Sicily represents to Puzo, a violent, beautiful dystopia, that lingers in the mind. (Kirkus UK)
The final volume of Puzo's sensationally popular Mafia trilogy (after The Godfather, 1969, and The Last Don, 1996), completed shortly before his recent death, explores in characteristically slam-bang fashion the consequences of a violation of the Sicilian `code of silence` (omerta) on which Mafia security and power are based.The flaws are easy to spot: generic characters, middling dialogue, overfamiliar narrative situations and twists, andespecially in this installments expository opening pagesan overreliance on summary that retards the story's pace and makes us perversely eager for some salutary slaughter. Puzo doesn't disappoint, in the tangled tale of the legacy bequeathed by venerable Don Raymonde Aprile, who had forsworn criminal activities and built a `legit` banking empire. When the Don is murdered, his presumably respectable heirs (a high-powered woman attorney, a TV network executive, a stiff-necked West Point officer, and their adopted `cousin,` a pasta mogul) are drawn into a fabulously plotted crossfire of intrigue, betrayal, and murder. Also implicated: a seemingly straight-arrow FBI agent (`the man who broke up the Mafia` in New York City), the importunate crime boss who thinks hes pocketed him, a cheerful party girl whose list of lovers includes several criminal bigwigs, and a corrupt (and murderous) black woman police commissioner. The surprises keep coming as the body count increases, and Puzo expertly steers the plot toward an agreeably bloody climax (`the Macaroni Massacre`). There are also such incidental pleasures as a pair of nonidentical-twin brother assassins, a courtly drug-lord who aims to build a defensive nuclear arsenal, and several wry Mafioso aperus (`After you decide to kill a man, never speak to him. It makes things embarrassing for both of you`).To some extent a retread, but who cares ? This is lurid and fascinating pop entertainment. Nobody did it better. (Kirkus Reviews)
About the Author
Mario Puzo was the author of eight novels, including the second-bestselling paperback novel of all time, The Godfather. He also wrote ten screenplays, including Superman and Superman II. For both of his screen adaptations of The Godfather he won Academy Awards. Mario Puzo died in 1999: Omertà is his last, dramatic word on the Mafia’s world of brutal glamour.
Excerpted from Omerta by Mario Puzo. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
CHAPTER 1
When the sturzo twins, Franky and Stace, pulled into Heskow’s driveway, they saw four very tall teenagers playing basketball on the small house court. Franky and Stace got out of their big Buick, and John Heskow came out to meet them. He was a tall, pear-shaped man; his thin hair neatly ringed the bare top of his skull, and his small blue eyes twinkled. “Great timing,” he said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” The basketball game halted. Heskow said proudly, “This is my son, Jocko.” The tallest of the teenagers stuck out his huge hand to Franky. “Hey,” Franky said. “How about giving us a little game?” Jocko looked at the two visitors. They were about six feet tall and seemed in good shape. They both wore Ralph Lauren polo shirts, one red and the other green, with khaki trousers and rubber-soled shoes. They were amiable-looking, handsome men, their craggy features set with a graceful confidence. They were obviously brothers, but Jocko could not know they were twins. He figured them to be in their early forties. “Sure,” Jocko said, with boyish good nature. Stace grinned. “Great! We just drove three thousand miles and have to loosen up.” Jocko motioned to his companions, all well over six feet, and said, “I’ll take them on my side against you three.” Since he was the much better player, he thought this would give his father’s friends a chance. “Take it easy on them,” John Heskow said to the kids. “They’re just old guys futzing around.” It was midafternoon in December, and the air was chilly enough to spur the blood. The cold Long Island sunlight, pale yellow, glinted off the glass roofs and walls of Heskow’s flower sheds, his front business. Jocko’s young buddies were mellow and played to accommodate the older men. But suddenly Franky and Stace were whizzing past them for layup shots. Jocko stood amazed at their speed; then they were refusing to shoot and passing him the ball. They never took an outside shot. It seemed a point of honor that they had to swing free for an easy layup. The opposing team started to use their height to pass around the older men but astonishingly enough got few rebounds. Finally, one of the boys lost his temper and gave Franky a hard elbow in the face. Suddenly the boy was on the ground. Jocko, watching everything, didn’t know exactly how it happened. But then Stace hit his brother in the head with the ball and said, “Come on. Play, you shithead.” Franky helped the boy to his feet, patted him on the ass, and said, “Hey, I’m sorry.” They played for about five minutes more, but by then the older men were obviously tuckered out and the kids ran circles around them. Finally, they quit. Heskow brought sodas to them on the court, and the teenagers clustered around Franky, who had charisma and had shown pro skills on the court. Franky hugged the boy he had knocked down. Then, he flashed them a man-of-the-world grin, which set pleasantly on his angular face. “Let me give you guys some advice from an old guy,” he said. “Never dribble when you can pass. Never quit when you’re twenty points down in the last quarter. And never go out with a woman who owns more than one cat.” The boys all laughed. Franky and Stace shook hands with the kids and thanked them for the game, then followed Heskow inside the pretty green-trimmed house. Jocko called after them, “Hey, you guys are good!” Inside the house, John Heskow led the two brothers upstairs to their room. It had a very heavy door with a good lock, the brothers noticed as Heskow let them in and locked the door behind them. The room was big, a suite really, with an attached bathroom. It had two single beds—Heskow knew the brothers liked to sleep in the same room. In a corner was a huge trunk banded with steel straps and a heavy metal padlock. Heskow used a key to unlock the trunk and then flung the lid open. Exposed to view were several handguns, automatic weapons, and munitions boxes, in an array of black geometric shapes. “Will that do?” Heskow asked. Franky said, “No silencers.” “You won’t need silencers for this job.” “Good,” Stace said. “I hate silencers. I can never hit anything with a silencer.” “OK,” Heskow said. “You guys take a shower and settle in, and I’ll get rid of the kids and cook supper. What did you think of my kid?” “A very nice boy,” Franky said. “And how do you like the way he plays basketball?” Heskow said with a flush of pride that made him look even more like a ripened pear.
“Exceptional,” Franky said. “Stace, what do you think?” Heskow asked. “Very exceptional,” said Stace. “He has a scholarship to Villanova,” Heskow said. “NBA all the way.”
