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Summary
Summary
Joey Goldman, the illegitimate son of the Godfather, turns to his friend, reporter Arty Magnus, for help when his father decides to retire and needs a ghostwriter to help him write his memoirs, but there are many enemies out to stop the project.
Author Notes
Laurence Shames was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, and graduated summa cum laude from NYU, in 1972. He became a journalist, and was published in magazines such as Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. In 1982, he was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor.
In 1991, Shames co- wrote a national non-fiction best-seller on the Mafia called Boss of Bosses, with two FBI agents. This success afforded him the opportunity to write fiction full-time, and he has since written ten Key West comic thrillers. He won the CWA Last Laugh Dagger Award for the funniest crime novel of 1995 with Sunburn.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When a hack reporter agrees to ghostwrite a mafioso's memoirs, he also makes some powerful enemies in Shames's comic Florida thriller. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
More felonious fun in the Florida Keys with the family of retiring Mafioso Vincente Delgatto (Florida Straits, 1992, etc.). It's like this, see. Don Vincente, the Reluctant Godfather, wants to beat his swords into gardening shears and thinks of maybe writing his memoirs while he's at it; his illegitimate son Joey Goldman, meanwhile, digs up an equally reluctant ghostwriter, Key West Sentinel editor Arty Magnus. The Godfather, who makes it clear to Arty that he's not out to incriminate anybody who's not already dead or doing life, is too honorable to feel any sense of danger, and Arty himself is too dumb. But danger there is. Joey's vicious, pushy half-brother Gino Delgatto--who doesn't have his hands full enough with his current bimbo, dog beautician Debbi Martini--goes off to Miami to lean on his father's old business associates, and the negotiations end several days later with him ratting out the old man. At the same time, a pair of FBI agents from the land of snow and ice have been pressed to pin the latest New York mob hit on the Godfather. The Feebies, like Gino, decide that Arty is the weak link; using what they know about Debbi, whom he's taken up with in Gino's absence, they're determined to pump him dry; Gino wants to buy himself back from the grave by killing Arty even before he finds out about Debbi. The Godfather, getting wind of Gino's treachery from Joey, dispatches his old friend Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia to the Big Apple to set things straight. But what can an old man and an arthritic chihuahua sharing a moth-eaten suit do when they've been away from the city so long they don't even know how to find their mark? Not as original, as funny, or as unpredictable as Florida Straits, but still as bouncy and breezy as you'd expect from a much older pro.
Booklist Review
Aging Vincente Delgatto, capo di tutti capo of the New York Mafia, knows that honor is dead and that the feds have the Mob on the run. He's taken on the worst job in the Big Apple. When his wife dies, Vincente goes to Key West for a rest. Pondering life, death, and his relationship with his two very different sons, Vincente decides to collaborate with a Key West journalist on his memoirs. When news of the book gets out, it throws the Mob, the FBI, and everyone around him into a spin. Filled with wonderful characters, clever dialogue, and an almost palpable sense of place--namely Key West and Queens--it has excitement, tension, laughs, pathos, and a loopy, sweet, spirited wisdom. Sunburn is one of those books you just don't want to end. ~--Thomas Gaughan
Library Journal Review
While Vincent Delgatto, head of the Pugliese family and leader of the New York City Mafia, is vacationing in Florida with his illegitimate son, he looks for something useful to do. Artie Magnus, newspaper editor, needs a project to get him out of a dead-end job. The two come together to collaborate on a book about Delgatto's life and philosophy. The fly in the ointment is Gino Delgatto, the godfather's legitimate son. Gino, a punk and troublemaker, breezes into Key West with a plan guaranteed to upset the balance of power between the ruling families of organized crime. Third-time novelist Shames (e.g., Scavenger Reef, S. & S., 1994) has a good ear for dialect and an even better sense for using a minimum of description to create real people and believable situations. Recommended for all fiction collections.-Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
