Casino Moon [Hardcover]

Peter Blauner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

In a Mafia novel for the 1990s, Anthony Russo is an ambitious young man who finds out how difficult it is to realize his dream of getting out of the violent family business and becoming a legitimate business man. 20,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A young man's struggle to break free of his gangster family holds center stage in Blauner's second novel, a competent but derivative tale that's no match for his Edgar-winning Slow Motion Riot. The author again offers a gritty portrait of lowlifes, in this case an Atlantic City crew riven by federal harassment, falling income and paranoia. But the wish of Anthony Russo, adopted son of underboss Vincent Russo, to go straight won't surprise those who recall Michael Corleone in The Godfather; nor will Anthony's slow realization that the sins of the father, including blood lust, are inherited by the son. That the hero's love interest is an ex-whore with a heart of gold also doesn't earn points for originality. Even so, Anthony's scheme to make his own way by managing an aging boxer on the comeback trail brings readers deep into the dirty world of prizefighting, with Blauner tracing the boxer's battered nobility with as much sensitivity as he does Anthony's love/hate toward the man who raised him. Forgetting that less can be more, though, the author implicates Vincent Russo in the death of Anthony's natural father, a complication as distracting as the narration's choppy alternation between first and third person. Still, this isn't bad for a sophomore slump.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"Take a Chance, Take a Chance" urges a flashing neon sign in Atlantic City. Anthony Russo does take chances: he starts a construction business in the midst of a recession and ignores his minor, under-boss stepfather's persistent request that he ingratiate himself with the local Mafia. Desperate to provide for his growing family without having to work for or borrow more from the "family," Anthony decides to sponsor a has-been boxer attempting to make a comeback. Rosemary, a single mother working as a wrestler in a bar, among other degrading jobs, thinks that helping Anthony is her chance to get the funds for a new life in Seattle. Although nothing goes right from the start, Anthony perseveres to an ironic freedom when he is arrested for murder. This bleak, violent novel should receive as much reader and critical attention as did Blauner's Slow Motion Riot, a 1992 Edgar Allen Poe Award winner (LJ 5/1/91).
V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671881779
• ISBN-13: 978-0671881771
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,391,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When I was a kid, I quickly realized I didn't have much talent for throwing the baseball or playing a musical instrument or anything like that. What I had was a desire to write - which, of course, is not the same as having talent. That didn't stop me from focusing and honing in, practicing my writing the way other kids practiced free throws or 100-yard sprints.

Pretty early on, it occurred to me that I didn't want to run in the same race as everybody else anyway. A writer should have has her own slant on things. So I decided to go my own way. Even though I write what are classified as "crime novels," I don't have granite-jawed heroes or spunky heroines who always triumph over the bad guys. There are enough of those in the bookstores. I write about people with considerable flaws and consuming struggles, trying to make sense of their lives. I don't expect you to cuddle up to them or want to invite them to your Christmas dinner. But I think they have a lot of heart. Not in the sentimental sense. But in the raw, pulsing, heaving, still-beating-in-spite-of-everything sense.

I certainly don't mean to sound high-minded. After this many years in the game, I don't think a novel (particularly a "crime novel") can - or even should try to - cause great social change and upheaval. Most people just want a good story that can help pass the time on a plane. And that's my goal as well. But every once in a while, it can maybe also give you a slightly different way of looking at the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Top notch tale of corruption, February 19, 2006

By 

LGwriter "SharpWitGuy" (Astoria, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Casino Moon (Paperback)

This is about a guy whose father was killed by the mob, but who is then raised by another guy who's IN the mob. Then he marries the daughter of a local mob boss so for all intents and purposes he's in the mob himself.

But he doesn't wanna be.

But he is. And it's the obligation stuff that pounds away at his soul, that gnaws at him, that makes him nuts, and that ultimately leads to his downfall. He has two kids; he meets another woman; he tries to make money from boxing. The author, Peter Blauner, knows exactly how to handle his characters--how to give them dialogue that sounds exactly like they should be speaking to each other and how to have them do the things they would do to make the reader get grabbed by the story.

This has no happy ending, but I'm not spoiling anything by saying that. It's a really well written piece of work and makes the minutes fly by. Too bad it wasn't made into a film (my favorite medium). Too often, mob stories don't really bring out how corrupting an association with the mob can be to someone not really in the mob, yet in it by association. Here's one that does and that nails it, perfectly.

Highly recommended--nifty.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a mob story, May 20, 2009

By 

Joseph J. Maniscalco (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Casino Moon (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

More than a gritty mob story, which it is, this is a novel--filled with tragedy, redemption, and visions of love and loyalty. Blauner's characterizations are excellent, with heroes and villains who share flawed personalities along with human qualities.
It's a thick book for Hard Case Crime loyalists, but breezes by like an off-shore wind from the Atlantic. The 1990's setting of Atlantic City hasn't changed much over the years... and certainly the excitement of this book hasn't dimished.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious gangland epic, October 20, 2011

By 

J. Shurin "carnivore" (London) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Casino Moon (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback)) (Mass Market Paperback)

Casino Moon feels surprisingly epic for a Hard Case Crime selection, and, indeed, Casino Moon starts out like some sort of Tolkienian (or Martinesque) adventure. Our hero, Anthony Russo, is the prodigal son. His adopted father, Vin, is a sort of mid-level Mafia hood. Russo wants to go his own way. He sees the corruption and the grinding servitude of the mob life and he desires something better. Russo's ambitions are also overshadowed by memories of his real dad. Like any good fantasy novel, his true lineage is royalty. Michael Dillon was the prince of mobsters - a man with sharp suits, big dreams and, ultimately, a bullet in the face.

Swap bullet for sword and mob for throne and this really is the set-up of a fantasy doorstop. But that greatly oversimplifies the character of Anthony Russo. It rapidly becomes clear that Russo isn't disgusted with the mob life out of some moral principle. Russo crusades under one banner: Anthony Russo. He's crushed by debt to his kingpin uncle-in-law, his contracting business is rubbish, his wife and children are a stifling, unappreciative mess... Russo just wants out. He identifies with the "legitimate" casino tycoons of Atlantic City who saw their chances, took them, and now get to wear sharp suits and have great hair.

Russo's chance comes with Elijah Barton - an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer. Barton is savvy, angry ex-champion with the desperate need to prove himself one final time. Russo sees Barton's last chance as his own first step. Borrowing more money and throwing himself into the conniving world of boxing (and Russo thought the mob was dirty), he commits himself wholly to getting Barton the big fight. (And making himself rich out of it.)

Although Russo's ambition is strangely admirable, his methods are not. And the depths to which he'll sink in order to succeed soon have the reader questioning his motives as well. Is everyone around Russo really that awful? Is he really that trapped? Mr. Blauner further muddies the waters by populating the book with an admirable cast of dubious characters. Elijah Barton is perhaps the most straightforward, if only because he's distilled his entire life's ambition into a single physical, visceral goal. His success and failure rests wholly in his own (massive) hands - something that earns Russo's grudging admiration. But Russo's supposedly-stifling family - his step-father, Vin, and his uncle by marriage, Teddy - they're not purely malevolent figures in ill-fitting suits. They're murderous mobsters, sure, but they're also tough old men with their own health problems, financial struggles and growing insecurities. The author scatters the book with scenes that don't involve Russo at all, showing the reader that Vin and Teddy aren't the Machiavellian harpies that our protagonist thinks.

There's something of Hamlet in the family relationship, exacerbated when tales of Russo's (blood) father's murder suddenly resurface. Russo is utterly self-obsessed and blind to the consequences of his actions. Teddy and Vin are a generation away, starting to confess and regret their own immature actions, gradually learning to prioritise family over ambition. And Russo's poor wife, Carla, is the Ophelia of Atlantic City - adored by her uncle Teddy, abandoned by the relentlessly self-absorbed Russo.

I've always loved the Arthur Hailey school of fiction - stories that delvs into the microscopic detail of a organisation and then shows what happens when it collapses under extreme circumstances. Casino Moon has the feel of the final chapters of a Hailey novel - the dying days of the Atlantic City mob with a bit of boxing sprinkled in for verisimilitude. But Hailey's books were about isolated people, interconnected by an impersonal system. Mr. Blauner's is the reverse - positing that people are invariably, inescapably connected to one another, no matter where they are or what they do. It makes for a tough book, as the protagonist's primary goal - escape - is immediately recognisable as unachievable. Russo will never be free of his past and his family, and the more he struggles to escape them, the tighter his binds become.