Customer Reviews

Mile High

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4 star:		(1)
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Richard Condon's "Mile High" is one of the smartest, most exciting thrillers in the entire canon of American popular fiction. It was published the same year as Mario Puzo's "The Godfather." Both books feature a mafia leader known as Don Vito (interestingly, each book also has a minor character named Coppolla). There are numerous similarities between Puzo's book and Condon's, but Condon's is definitely the more intelligent and ambitious of the two. The story hits upon many of the highlights (or, perhaps, lowlights) of American history: slavery, Prohibition, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, etc. The book starts out like a runaway train, and concludes with one of the most gripping showdowns in print. There is about a 100-page stretch early in the book where Condon slows his plot down with excessive detail about the family business that is at the core of this superthriller. But from about page 200 onward, the novel is as inescapable as car careening through the loops and lifts of really devious roller-coaster.

I defy eny reader of this book to conclude that it is a novel or a non-fiction work.It is absolutely breath taking - I couldn't put it down. A terrific read. I found it in a library in Palm Springs. If you can find a copy, it will be worth your time!

Richard Condon's account of Edward Courance West parallels the selling of the Kennedy myth by the master con of all--Joe Kennedy. Worth reading about every 10 years to see how far down the slope we have come.

I read both at the same time (The Godfather & Mile High). I passed the Godfather one along at that time. It got all the press. Yet many, many years later this is the one that sticks to my gut. It hits hard at the truth -in fiction form. Because, quite frankly, thats the only way it could be told. Nothing has changed. A Must Read.

This is an imagined history of the hidden forces that shaped the American 20th century. Written with splenetic good humor, it postulates the Prohibition movement as the creation of one greedy New York Irish-Sicilian banker who turns his inherited knowledge of the synergy between New York ward politics, big business and organized crime into the blueprint for a tyakeover of the soul of the nation. It draws from Asbury's The Gangs of New York and also serves as a thematic "pre-quel" to Condon's other, more well-known masterpieces, The Manchurian Candidate and the multi-book Prizzi's Honor series. What a wonderful movie for the mind's eye.

Why this book never got its due is beyond me. This is a great book written by one of the most amazing authors ever. And like many of his books this is close enough to how it may all have happened that it'll make you wonder.

I want to thank Dr. Mike Savage for informing me of this book, author, and insights therein.

Should only be read by those who truly want to know how the puppet masters play the game. The takeaway is you are one of the puppets. This amazing book provides the "how" it could be done. The reader will have to decide if it could really happen this way. In the early 1960's I worked with a Chilean man who was a former seaman, then in his 60's. He claimed he worked on the Kennedy yacht during Prohibition. The boat was stripped of its interior and was filled with the finest wines and liquors from France. Back and forth, back and forth for years. He claimed the Boston police escorted the boat to the dock and guarded the unloading process. Read the book.