Fence Jumpers: a novel [Paperback]

Robert Leuci (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2010

"It was one of those Irish joints, a spot where you sucked down tap beer from paper cups, got loaded, then pulled chicks under the boardwalk. At night, if you got lucky, you could watch JoJo fistfight off-duty cops. Like JoJo and Dante, Jimmy was nineteen, and he loved every hour of every day of each week of his life." As adults, Dante O'Donnell followed his dead father into the police force; Jimmy Burns, closer than a blood brother, went along. JoJo Paradiso's future was preordained: He would be, first, an underboss in his father's crime family, eventually stepping into Salvator Paradiso's shoes. When Detectives O'Donnell and Burns are assigned to get the goods on JoJo Paradiso, it can't be a simple matter of cop against crook.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Characters authentic enough to be carved out of New York City sidewalks skitter along a thin line that divides loyalties in this outstanding black-humored mob-and-cop yarn. Detectives Dante O'Donnell and Saul "Jimmy" Burns grew up in Queens, forming an inseparable trio with JoJo Paradiso, son of and heir to Sally Blue Eyes, the local don. Now JoJo is going against his mafia family's wishes by moving the Paradiso family into the drug trade. Partnered on the Organized Crime Task Force, Dante and Jimmy collide with their pasts when assigned to the Paradiso wiretapping team with detectives Kathy Gibbons and Ray Velasquez. Tension builds as JoJo is tipped that the feds have an informer in the crime family's inner circle and as Ray identifies a cop who's been feeding JoJo police information?a fingering that costs one detective his life. Meanwhile, Kathy, a lesbian, develops emotional ties to Dante as the pair go after the Paradiso gang, and JoJo works frantically to seal a drug deal with Cuban suppliers, keep his activities secret from "the old man" and smoke out the family traitor. Matters come to a bloody head as a mob war erupts and JoJo and the cops each settle the score with their respective snitches, leading to a prefectly orchestrated ending. Leuci (Doyle's Disciples) makes his characters breathe, wisecrack and bleed off the pages of this hypnotic thriller, capturing the crazed loneliness and desperation of soldiers on both sides of the crime war.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

A fence jumper is a mafioso who turns against his family or a police officer who turns against his creed. There are plenty of both in this bullet-ridden novel about three young men who grow up to work on opposite sides of the street, as it were. Jojo Paradiso follows his father into the Sicilian American family business, chafing at the parental injunction against peddling drugs. Dante O'Donnell follows in his late father's footsteps as a New York City police officer, with one serious exception--he refuses to take bribes. Their buddy Jimmy tries to stay loyal to both old friends, with disastrous results. Filled with the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes action of both the police department and the criminal world, Leuci's novel shows characters walking a tightrope of friendship and crime. Denise Perry Donavin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 338 pages
• Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries; 1 edition (January 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559213485
• ISBN-13: 978-1559213486
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,077,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unforgetable- pure and simple, August 14, 2000

By 

Richard Friedman (Lake Worth, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fence Jumpers (Hardcover)

This book is stays with you long after you finish. It is rare for a novel to be so real, so affecting, but this is. Anyone interested in police work, NYC or more important, friendship and betrayal, should rush out and get this brillant book. You will never forget it. Leuci is a magnificent writer

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting character study, not much plot, November 28, 2003

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fence Jumpers (Hardcover)

This is a deceptively long book, filled with atmosphere, and lacking much in the way of plot. Jimmy Burns, JoJo Paradiso, and Dante O'Donnell grew up in the same neighborhood, and now Burns and O'Donnell are cops on the Organized Crime Task Force, conducting surveillance on Paradiso and his buddies. Paradiso is the son of the local Don, and while said Don is aging and slowing down, he still controls things enough to make his prohibition against the family doing business with drug dealers or dealing drugs themselves. JoJo wants to overturn this and go into the drug business in a big way, in order to make money, so he's scheming behind his father's back.

This comprises the first half of the book. By the time the plot actually got going, I was pretty bored. The atmosphere is well-done, and the characters are interesting. When the plot does get going, however, it's almost totally predictable and takes way too long to get where it's going, especially since the first half of the book took so long to get to that point anyway. I enjoyed this book somewhat, but calling it a mystery or a suspense novel is a stretch to say the least.