Gangster

January 1, 2001
"I was now well-prepared to be a career criminal... I just didn't have the stomach for any of it." Carcaterra's latest crime novel is the tantalizing coming-of-age story of orphan Gabe, groomed by longtime New York City mob boss Angelo Vestieri to be his successor. The novel opens in the 1990s as Gabe, now middle-aged, keeps watch over Vestieri on his hospital deathbed. Slipping back in time to the Depression, the narrative tracks the rise of the famed mob boss from Italian immigrant to lord of Manhattan's underworld, when Gabe, 10, walks into Vestieri's bar after running out on his latest foster parents in 1964. Vestieri takes the impressionable boy under his wing and ushers him into the world of organized crime. Gabe runs numbers, collects debts and learns loyalty and the price of betrayal. Yet when the time comes for Gabe to take over the operation, he refuses, choosing a normal life despite his deep love for Vestieri. As he did in Sleepers and Apaches, Carcaterra shows dexterity in humanizing the denizens of the urban underbelly. Through a fine characterization of the enigmatic Vestieri, he provides a stirring perspective on the ways of mobsters and their history. Yet the book's central theme, the complex choice facing Gabe, is poorly developed, rarely penetrating the surface of his rejection of gang life. Carcaterra's portrayal focuses primarily on violence as the source of Gabe's revulsion, only touching on Gabe's understanding of how mobsters--through fear and corruption--influence society in much deeper ways. (Feb. 1) Forecast: From its bold title and catchy cover to the publisher's plans for major ad/promo, including a six-city author tour, this novel promises to perform. Its major push, though, will come down the road, from a four-hour ABC miniseries already in the works.

November 15, 2000
Covering a span of 90 years, Carcaterra (Sleepers) spins a dry and somewhat predictable tale of two generations of a Mob "family." Boss Angelo Vestieri lies dying in a hospital bed with two visitors by his side. One is Gabe, a man who as a child had been befriended and ultimately raised by Angelo. The other is Mary, initially introduced as a mysterious woman from Angelo's past who has come to witness his death. Through their recollections, we learn first of Angelo's rise from street urchin to boss, then of the development of his relationship with Gabe. By the novel's end, the ties among all three have been neatly explained, providing excellent closure to the story. What prevents the book from becoming truly compelling is the triteness of its characters, who seem to lack complexity in their behavior and who evoke no sympathy from the reader. Despite its shortcomings, Carcaterra's latest should still move in public libraries, especially among readers who enjoy gangster novels and also because it is scheduled to be a four-hour ABC minseries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/00.]--Craig L. Shufelt, Gladwin Cty. Lib., MI

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2000
Carcaterra is the author of the widely applauded novel " Sleepers" (1995), made into a movie, about boys growing up in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. His latest novel is no less brutal as he brings his readers into the world of urban organized crime. The novel is structured around the remembrances of a man who, as a boy, was a junior member of the New York Mob run by big-time gangster Angelo Vestieri. The life of the gangster, who now lies dying in a hospital, is laid out in graphic, intimate terms as the narrator reconstructs the old man's life from his childhood in Italy through his years as a gangster in the thick of the New York crime underworld. The irony is that the old gangster's father had brought him to New York from the Old Country as a" bambino," in the early years of the twentieth century, to get him away from the clutches of the Mafia that claimed the souls of children and the lives of men. In the New World, though, the boy was brought up in a cramped tenement with little family love, the seeds of his brutal adult life sewn in the streets of Manhattan. What makes Carcaterra's portrait of Vestieri so effective is not only the "adventures" Vestieri experiences in a career so cold and calculating, but also the author's psychological fathoming of the kind of character that turns to a life of organized crime. Expect high demand for this very compelling drama.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2000
Already scheduled as a four-hour ABC miniseries, this work by the author of Sleepers features Angelo Vestieri, a top gangster in early 20th-century New York, whose criminal life grinds to a halt when he stumbles upon an abandoned child who needs a parent, not a godfather.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.