Bad Moon

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The good news is that FBI agents Gibbons and Tozzi (last seen in Bad Business ) are back for a fifth appearance. Even better news: their main foe is again Mafia capo Sal Immordino, aided and abetted by his sister Cil, a nun. Sal, feigning madness in a New Jersey asylum, schemes to take over the Mistretta family and to eliminate Tozzi, the one person who knows he's not crazy. After a bloody--and funny--mob rub-out, Sal's plan slips when the attack on Tozzi fails. Helped by a corrupt asylum guard, Sal plans to make the hit himself and make a psychopathic young killer the scapegoat, but complications ensue when the psychopath's medication runs out. Meanwhile, Gibbons fights office politics (a female psychologist-agent is brought in over him) and Tozzi broods about nearing 40 and fears continuing impotence. The climax, set at a big Mafia funeral, is hilarious, and features a corpus ex machina. This series dazzles with fast, intricate plotting, terrific characters and humor: Cil, in full ecclesiastical drag, ``turned into a nun, a real nun, like the ones Sal remembered from Catholic school. Brutal.'' Only the FBI won't like this one. (July)

Library Journal

Popular renegade FBI agents Tozzi and Gibbons (e.g., Bad Luck , Delacorte, 1990; Bad Business , Delacorte, 1991) struggle with mob murderers set in motion by an institutionalized racketeer.