Omerta

From Barnes & Noble

The Last, Last Don

Although Mario Puzo actually wrote about a great many subjects—gambling, politics, postwar military life, the Italian-American immigrant experience—a single, lucrative obsession surfaced in his fiction again and again: the history and evolution of the Mafia in 20th-century America. His final novel, the posthumously published Omerta, revisits that obsession and forms the independent third installment in a thematic trilogy that began with The Godfather and continued, in 1995, with The Last Don. In these three novels and in their 1984 sibling, The Sicilian, Puzo created a fictional world with a mythical resonance all its own and invested the realities of organized crime with a lurid, operatic grandeur.

Omerta introduces a new Mafia family worthy of the Corleones and the Clericuzios: the family of Don Raymonde Aprile. Their story begins in Sicily in 1967, when the dying Don Vincenzo Zeno—"the last of the true Mafia chiefs"—entrusts the young Raymonde Aprile with the task of raising his soon-to-be-orphaned two-year-old son, Astorre. Following this brief prologue, the novel moves forward nearly 30 years to the world of contemporary New York. Don Raymonde is now retired and has realized one of the great dreams of the career criminal: He has become legitimate. In the grand tradition of the American robber barons, he has extricated himself from all illegal activities, helped his children establish themselves in safe, prestigious professions, and become "a gentleman banker and pillar of society." Three years after his retirement, he is shot to death on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral by a pair of professional hit men.

In the aftermath of the Don's death, Astorre, his adopted son, takes center stage. Astorre, on the surface, is a harmless sort: a wedding singer, horseman, and ladies' man who earns his living by managing the Aprile family's macaroni franchise. He is also a "Qualified Man," trained in the ways of the old Mafiosi and steeped in the Sicilian traditions of honor and vengeance. Astorre attempts to follow his late guardian's instructions by protecting the Aprile heirs and by preserving the integrity of their multibillion dollar banking interests. But at the same time, he follows the dictates of the ancient code of Omerta and ruthlessly pursues the men responsible for Don Raymonde's murder.

Astorre's quest brings him into contact with a vivid, often vile gallery of supporting characters. Among them are a rival Mafia chieftain with his own undisclosed agenda; a South-American drug lord with a demented desire to own and operate his own nuclear arsenal; an FBI agent whose obsessive dedication leads to tragic consequences; two lethal, deeply compromised NYPD homicide detectives; and a pair of charming, athletic fraternal twins who specialize in murder for hire. Astorre's encounters with these and other, violent and corrupt players nearly cost him his life and culminate in a bloody confrontation in which justice—Sicilian style—prevails.

Omerta is a spare, tightly plotted novel that encapsulates the changing nature of the Cosa Nostra in little more than 300 pages, moving from the hill towns of Sicily—where patriarchal chieftains rule with Biblical authority—to the boardrooms of Manhattan, where modern bandits wear three-piece suits and theorize about "synergy" and "global syndication." Omerta may not be Puzo's masterpiece—it's slightly less involving than its predecessors, and a number of passages have an underdeveloped, slightly unfinished quality—and it's unlikely to eclipse the popularity of The Godfather. Still, it's a gripping book by a gifted writer who was both a craftsman and a storyteller and who opened up a corner of the world that no other novelist saw as clearly, or wrote about as well.

—Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His most recent book is At the Foot of the Story Tree, a critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub.

About the Author

Mario Puzo was born in New York and, following military service in World War II, attended New York's New School for Social Research and Columbia University. His bestselling novel The Godfather (1969) was preceded by two critically acclaimed novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965). In 1978, he published Fools Die, followed by The Sicilian (1984), The Fourth K (1990), and the second installment in his Mafia trilogy, The Last Don (1996), which became an international bestseller and the highest-rated TV miniseries of 1997.

Mario Puzo also wrote many screenplays, including those for Earthquake, Superman, and all three Godfather movies, for which he received two Academy Awards. He died in July 1999 at his home on Long Island, New York, at the age of 78.

From the Publisher

"[A] deft and passionate last novel by the Balzac of the Mafia."
—Time

"A SPLENDID PIECE OF CRIME FICTION . . . A FITTING CAP TO A TREMENDOUS CAREER . . . Through it all, Puzo keeps the heat on and keeps the reader enthralled with his characters and his story."
—The Denver Post

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

The final chapter in Mario Puzo's landmark Mafia trilogy is "a great read," and "impossible to put down!" A terrific plot and "likeable, though really bad guy" characters add up to "a definite recommendation."

R. Z. Sheppard

This posthumously published novel by the author of The Godfather has more tasty twists than a plate of fusilli...Cunning entanglements with an FBI gangbuster, crooked cops and strong women sauce up this deft and passionate last novel by the Balzac of the Mafia.
— Time Magazine

Tom Walker

A splendid piece of crime fiction....Through it all, Puzo keeps the heat on and keeps the reader enthralled with his characters and his story. He was the consummate pro and he knew his subject like no one before him. Omerta is a fitting cap to a tremendous career.
— Denver Post

John Smyntek

In Omerta, Puzo cements his reputation as a page-turning storyteller. And on many a beach or poolside this summer, readers will run the risk of sunburn because Omerta will have grabbed their imaginations, making them forget it was time for more tanning butter...Let us end with the hope that maybe Francis Ford Coppola might somehow craft Omerta into the real finale to his cinematic Mafia threesome.
— Detroit Free Press

David Walton

Omerta is great fun to read, the perfect summer novel...full of action and invention, written in the high earnestness and wicked playfulness of Puzo's best style. With sly intent, he recasts some of the themes and devices from his earlier novels...The dialogue, always a high point in Puzo's books, is crisp and deadpan caustic.
— Trenton Times

New York Post

As with The Godfather--both the book and its movies--the reader gets sucked into the plot immediately and soon feels sympathies shifting and loyalties becoming confused. Who is the bad guy? Are there any good guys? Puzo's genius was to create a world so thick with personality and acknowledged rules of social behavior, along with its crime and violence, that reading his books becomes a seriously guilty pleasure.

Albert DiBartolomeo

Puzo fans will enjoy Omerta, as will others looking for a good book to read on the beach.
— Philadelphia Inquirer

Andrew Furman

To his credit, Puzo suffuses the novel with many of the ingredients his readers crave, tantalizingly documenting the lavish lifestyles and sexual exploits of his hot-blooded characters.
— Miami Herald

Publishers Weekly

"The dead have no friends," says one gangster to another in Puzo's final novel, as they plot to kill America's top Mafioso. But Puzo, despite his death last year at age 78, should gain many new friends for this operatic thriller, his most absorbing since The Sicilian. The slain mobster is the elderly Don Raymonde Aprile. His heirs, around whom the violent, vastly emotional narrative swirls, are his three children and one nephew. It's the nephew, Astorre Viola, who inherits the Don's legacy and transforms before his cousins' astonished eyes from a foppish playboy into a Man of Honor, as he avenges the Don's death and protects his family from those hungry for its prime possession: banks that will earn legitimate billions in the years ahead. Astorre's change is no surprise to the few aged mobsters who know that, as a youth, he was trained to be a Qualified Man, or to the fewer still who know--as Astorre does not--that his real father was a great Sicilian Mafioso. Arrayed against Astorre in his pursuit of cruel justice are some of the sharpest Puzo characters ever, among them a corrupt and beautiful black New York policewoman; assassin twins; wiseguys galore, including a drug lord who seeks his own nuclear weapon; and, drawn in impressive shades of gray, a veteran FBI agent who imperils his family and his soul to destroy Astorre. Despite its familiar subject matter, the novel--which shuttles among Sicily, England and America--is unpredictable and bracing, but its greatest strength is Puzo's voice, ripe with age and wisdom, as attentive to the scent of lemons and oranges in a Sicilian garden as to a good man's sudden, bloody death. This is pulp raised to art and a worthy memorial to the author, who one last time makes readers an offer they can't refuse. 500,000 first printing; simultaneous Random House audio and large print editions; to be a film from Miramax. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

The charismatic and expertly paced performance of veteran narrator Joe Mantegna enhances this fast-moving abridgment of the final installment of Puzo's Mafia trilogy. After his adopted uncle Don Aprile is assassinated, Astorre Viola must balance his promise to protect Aprile's three children and the family's legitimate banking business with his desire for revenge. As Astorre puts his plan to protect the family into place, he must contend with the FBI, the New York Police Department, and members of rival Mafia families who all want a piece of the Aprile pie. While certainly a fast-paced suspense novel, the story is also a commentary about how Old World values like respect and omerta (a code of honor) suffer in today's rapid-fire, globalized economy. Engaging with its colorful characters and satisfying plot, this is an excellent choice for all contemporary fiction collections.--Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist., Lib., OH Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

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, and—especially in this installment's expository opening pages—an 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 he's 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, andseveral wryMafioso aperçus (`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.