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...

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201613 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you're one of the many keen to be gripped again by the power and drama of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, rejoice at the appearance of his new book Omertà. We are once again in the dark, fascinating world of the Mafia. And this is a saga perfectly suited to the audiobook medium: a compelling tale that unfolds with a cold, glittering fascination. And who better than Joe Mantegna, star of Homicide, Bugsy and (most tellingly) the Godfather saga itself? His perfectly nuanced, dispassionate reading is spot on.

Omertà is the Sicilian code of silence, and is the essential element by which the Mafia has maintained its power over the centuries. But (as in the Corleone saga) Puzo is interested in the way in which changing times force organised crime to adapt, however painful the process. The code is tested when a mob boss is brutally murdered in New York, and both his nephew, Astorre, and the New York FBI chief, Cilke, inaugurate investigations into the killing. It soon becomes clear to both men that a grim conspiracy has spread its tentacles across rival gangs, corrupt bankers and even the courts. Astorre and Cilke both find that much blood must be spilled before the killers of Don Aprile are found--and there are many (on both sides of the law) who will do their best to stop them.

Puzo handles his themes with customary panache, and remains an old hand at moral equivalence: however much we may disapprove, we remain riveted by the implacable cold-bloodedness of his protagonists. --Barry Forshaw

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.

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.

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Customer Reviews

Vendetta!
This novel of a current-day criminal family, the Apriles, spans the range between the old Sicilian model and the modern world of big money from high finance. Don Aprile correctly anticipates that the legitimate world will be more profitable and safer. To prepare, his children are launched into totally legitimate activities (the army, television, and law) from birth and protected from knowing about Don Aprile's activities. But as a favor to an old friend, Don Aprile has become the sponsor of a young man who he treats as a nephew and prepares to become a man of honor in the Sicilian tradition. All proceeds according to plan until three years after Don Aprile's retirement from crime when he struck down by assassins while leaving the confirmation of his grandchild.

Astorre Viola, the nephew, has promised to protect the Don's family and to keep the family's legitimate banking business from being sold. The plot that causes the Don's death is related to a rival faction wanting the banks to launder drug and other sources of illegal money.

The plot centers around Astorre's emergence as a leader of the vendetta, protector of the family, and as a man finding his purpose in life. To do so, he has to find the killers and unwind the hidden path to those who hired them. Aided by the Don's old friends to help run the bank and give him advice on the vendetta, he grows in stature and confidence. Having unraveled the mystery, he then sets the jackels at each other's throats in a fascinatingly Machiavellian way.

The characters are rich and complex. Although this is a novel about crime, Puzo inserted fascinating personal quirks in almost every character. Astorre finds himself irresistibly attracted to the Don's daughter as a teenager and is sent off to Sicily by the Don to separate them. Later, he falls in love with a woman who can perfectly feign being in love with rich men who give her presents. At other times, Astorre acts against the code of the crime family by sparing lives. He is keeping a promise throughout, rather than acting out of personal conviction. His joys are simple ones, and he seeks ways to recapture them in the fullness of his maturity. Eventually, he learns of his own patrimony as the son of another Don in Sicily.

The "good guys" are hopelessly conflicted and seriously compromised either by their own greed or by the slippery morals of their superiors.

Even those who don't make it through the book provide lots of interesting characterizations, including the twin brother hit men and the broker who hires them.

But, best of all, Puzo has a sense of humor and he uses it to create contradictions that can only be resolved in unusual and humorous ways.

Every scene in this book has amazingly visual qualities, and should translate well into the promised movie based on this book.

Puzo deftly moves back and forth between the United States and Sicily to draw the contrast between the old and the new. It turns out that some of the key people in the new world have ties to the old, as well. This is also an attractive connection to the prior two books.

Other than enjoying a fast-paced story, what can one learn here? The continuing lesson for me was how people create problems for themselves by imagining that things are different then they are: our familiar old friend, the misconception stall. If they had taken the time to investigate more carefully before leaping, their lives would all have been simpler and happier. Puzo is warning us to look at ourselves and our ideas objectively if we are to achieve what we really want. Otherwise, we are doomed to act like robots, responding foolishly in knee-jerk fashion to the environment around us, rather than being the independent people we can be in creating our own futures. As such, we only provide amusement for objective observers.

Fantastic
Mario Puzo is a genius. From the first sentence i found that i couldnt stop reading. I kept turning pages eager to find out what will happen next. Puzo's description of the characters is fantastic and goes into much detail. Great Book!

A class effort that firmly establishes Puzo as the true Don
Upon reading this book i like any other Godfather fan had some severe reservations, how could Puzo even come close to his original masterpiece? Well the man is a true genius of writing on the mystic world of mafioso and he has managed to accomplish what i regard as an impossible task - a more interesting book than the Godfather. Before you all start to curse me though it is important for me to note that he takes heavily from previous work and it is quite clearly a Puzo gangster book rather than a new concept. Ultimately my belief is that the Godfather rules supreme, however Omerta is a quality read blighted only by the fact i thought it too short (it took me 3 hours to read it). I'd reccomend you go and buy it now if you have any interest in Puzo and his work.