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Mobbed Up Booklist
Page Modified: June 1, 2007
Fiction about gangsters and organized crime - Mafia, Russian Mob, etc.
A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.- Long Firm
Author: Arnott, Jake
Publisher: Soho List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 15947169x Date: 1999
Kirkus
PW
Club owner Harry Starks is a feared gangster in 1960s London. Five narrators tell the story of Harry's fall, and surprising resurrection, in this vividly imagined portrait of the sleazy London mobs ("firms") at the end of an era.
- Everbody Dies : Matt Scudder
Author: Block, Lawrence
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 068814182x Date: 1998
PW
Kirkus
PW's Best 98 Books selection
In his 14th adventure, Matthew Scudder, signs up to help his closest and most unlikely friend, the larger-than-life Hell's Kitchen hoodlum Mick Ballou - and soon finds himself living in a world where the past is a mine field, the present is a war zone, and the future's an open question.
- The Good Guys
Author: Bonanno, Bill
Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446529656 Date: 2005
Kirkus
The authors' extraordinary lives and experiences infuse this novel with chilling true-to-life details and a real insider's perspective. Bonanno is a former high-ranking member of a crime family, and Pistone is a former undercover FBI agent.
Updated 10.25.04 - Gone Bamboo
Author: Bourdain, Anthony
Publisher: Villard List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679448802 Date: 1997
PW
This wry, blistering thriller by the author of Bone in the Throat pits a CIA -trained assassin and his equally hard-nosed wife against two governments and a cross-dressing Mafioso. Sexy, raucous, and funny, Gone Bamboo is destined to burnish Bourdain's reputation and bring him the readership he so richly deserves.
- King Con
Author: Cannell, Stephen J.
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $24 ISBN: 0688147763 Date: 1997
PW
Accomplished grifter Beano Bates's lucky streak vanishes after a card game in which he scams 80 grand from a Mafia don who retaliates by having him nearly beaten to death. The savage beating leads to murder. Now Beano wants more than a big score, he wants revenge. Aided by a cunning female prosecutor and an army of crafty cousins, the king of the cons puts together the ultimate swindle--a game of strategy, skill and deception, and the target is America's most feared mob kingpin and his psychopathic brother.
Suggested Reading: Grift Sense
- City of Ice
Author: Farrow, John
Publisher: Random Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375501401 Date: 1999
Booklist
Reminiscent of Smilla's Sense of Snow, this gripping debut thriller, set in the bone-chilling midwinter Montreal, features an unorthodox detective pitted against the Russian mafia, CIA infiltrators, motorcycle gangs, and a corrupt police force.
- 30 Seconds
Author: Giancana, Sam
Publisher: Warner List Price: $ 24.50 ISBN: 044651716x Date: 1998
Kirkus
The nephew of mobster Sam Giancana and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Double Cross and his wife deliver a compelling tale of one innocent man's fight against the international drug trade, the CIA, and the Mafia.
- A Man with an Axe
Author: Jackson, Jon A.
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0871137089 Date: 1998
BL
Detroit Detective Sergeant "Fang" Mulheisen is about to begin an investigation into the mystery surrounding a headless corpse when a young kid arrives with an E-mail cartoon message addressed to Mulheisen. Soon the detective is being led on a scavenger hunt that takes him into modern jazz history, the Detroit police archives, and the notebook diaries of Grootka, his now-dead mentor.
- La Donna Detroit
Author: Jackson, Jon A.
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138107 Date: 2000
PW
In this compelling and unpredictable page-turner, Detective Sergeant "Fang" Mulheisen's latest investigation thrusts him into the nerve center of the Detroit mob. "Jon Jackson makes the hard-boiled form look as if he thought it up himself last week".--Newsday.
Updated 5/4/00 - The Dog Who Bit a Policeman
Author: Kaminsky, Stuart M.
Publisher: Mysterious List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 089296667x Date: 1998
PW
Booklist
PW's Best 98 Books selection
Moscow Police Inspector Porifry Rostnikov returns in another book in the Edgar Award-winning series - this time putting himself in league with members of the Russian Mafia, who feel the murders of two of their own are related to new gang wars.
- Mobtown
Author: Kelly, Jack
Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 0786866152 Date: 2002
Kirkus
In the deceptively quiet neighborhoods of 1950s Rochester, New York, Ike Van Savage's latest case starts out simply enough: a threatening husband and a beleaguered wife. But before he knows it, he's pulled into a serpentine mystery that involves the town's most notorious gangster, a dead heiress, and one too many "accidents."
Updated 11/21/01 - Fourth Down
Author: Klein, Dave
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312863705 Date: 1999
Booklist
When a star quarterback, who is bring forced by the mob to throw games, dies in the middle of a game, a former teammate starts digging deep into the suspected murder.
- The Narrowback
Author: Ledwidge, Michael S.
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Price: $ 24 ISBN: 087113716x Date: 1999
PW
A riveting and suspensful debut, The Narrowback is a tale of a soulful Irish-American gangster who dares to betray the IRA. Stylish, lucid, and compelling, "The Narrowback is as auspicious a debut as I've seen in years" (James Patterson).
- The Big Law
Author: Logan, Chuck
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 006019133 Date: 1998
PW
In his most electrifying thriller to date, an emerging master of the thriller pits one man's smoldering sense of justice against the FBI's witness protection program when he tracks down a killer shielded by the unwitting Feds.
- Family Honor
Author: Parker, Robert B.
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0399145664 Date: 1999
Kirkus
PW
After rescuing a wealth family's missing teenage daughter from prostitution, private investigator Sunny Randall becomes the girl's unlikely bodyguard, fending off some serious mobsters and getting involved in a murder case and criminal conspiracy.
- Omerta
Author: Puzo, Mario
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375502548 Date: 2000
Kirkus
PW
Library Journal
First came The Godfather, then The Last Don. Now prepare for the final chapter in Puzo's Mafia trilogy about power and morality in America. Omerta, from the Italian word for "code of silence", is a powerful epitaph for the Mafia at the century's end and a final triumph for a great American storyteller.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5/11/00 - Flower Net
Author: See, Lisa
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060175273 Date: 1997
PW
NYTBR Notable
A Chinese cop and an American DA travel the breadth of modern China - revealing to the reader the country's venerable culture, its teeming economy, its omnipotent mafia, its institutionalized cruelty - as they attempt to uncover the conspiracy behind a series of high-profile murders.
- Killing Ground
Author: Seymour, Gerald
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $19.95 ISBN: 0061011959 Date: 1997
Booklist
Kirkus
In this tense, gripping thriller from the bestselling author of Heart of Danger and the Fighting Man, an innocent young woman is recruited to go undercover in pursuit of a vicious mafia leader in hiding.
- Virgin Heat
Author: Shames, Laurence
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $21.95 ISBN:2786862033 Date: 1997
Booklist
Kirkus
Shames's thriller is his wildest to date, rich in excitement, tension, laughs, and loopy characters. Fed up with the life set up for him by the Federal Witness Protection Program, Sal Martucci is tending bar in Key West when he is spotted in a home video by his ex-sweetheart, Angie Amaro - the daughter of the man who wantes Sal dead.
- Charlie Opera
Author: Stella, Charlie
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786712139 Date: 2003
PW Booklist
A gritty underworld thriller that takes mob bosses, hit men, and gangland wannabes to Las Vegas, where the name of their game is Charlie Opera.
Updated 11.25.03 - Act of Revenge
Author: Tanenbaum, Robert K
Publisher: Harpercollins Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0060192186 Date: 1999
PW
"The most interesting pair of characters in the suspense genre" ("Chicago Tribune") comes to HarperCollins for the first time. When their daughter witnesses a tong murder in Chinatown, Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi find themselves entangled in a 20-year-old--but still very poisonous--Mafia conspiracy.
- Codes of Betrayal
Author: Uhnak, Dorothy
Publisher: St. Martin's List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312155824 Date: 1997
BL
For the first time in a decade, Dorothy Uhnak gives readers a new police novel of double jeopardy and triple cross that will seize fans of Puzo as well as Wambaugh. Codes of Betrayal is a story of intense drama and fiendish complication, in which one man is tested by his own drive for justice.
- Capo
Author: Watson, Peter
Publisher: Richard Cohen Books List Price: $17.95 (pbk) ISBN: 1860660118 Date: 1997
PW
When Silvio Randazzo completes his dangerous rite of passage, he goes from peasant boy to Mafia soldier. He also begins an extraordinary turn-of-the-century odyssey, one that leads him from his first vendetta killing in the hills of the old country to his rise as the most powerful gangster in America's most decadent city.
- The Godfather Returns
Author: Winegardner, Mark
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 1400061016 Date: 2004
PW Booklist
Winegardner--whose proposal for this novel was chosen in an international competition--brings new artistry and vision to Mario Puzo's mythic characters.
Updated 12.6.04 - California Fire and Life
Author: Winslow, Don
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679454314 Date: 1999
PW
From the author of The Death and Life of Bobby Z comes an unstoppable new novel about a Southern California Gold Coast conflagration of greed, deceit, and murder, and the one man trying to fight it.
Suggested Reading: On Fire - Whacking Jimmy
Author: Wolf, William L.
Publisher: Villard List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375501738 Date: 1998
Kirkus
The Freshman meets Carl Hiaasen in this hip and hilarious crime novel of an unwilling mafia heir's introduction to the ways of his family.
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