Paradise City [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Lorenzo Carcaterra (Author), David Colacci (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2004

As a fifteen-year-old, Giancarlo Lo Manto learned about injustice the hard way. His father was gunned down by the Camorra, the murderous clan run by Don Nicola Rossi. When his mother moved him back to his family’s ancestral home in Naples, Gian found himself face-to-face with the source of the mob’s strength, the spring that spawned it’s deadly killers. Today, twenty-three years later, he is a dogged detective on the Naples police force, homicide division, the most dangerous beat in Europe. He is the nemesis of all who export evil, the man who stops it before it spreads overseas. His efforts have not gone unnoticed. "The strength of Naples reinforces the muscle of New York" – and now the two worlds are about to collide. In the highest towers of the most expensive streets of New York City, Pete Rossi, the son of Don Nicola, has decided to bring Gian back to America – permanently. When Gian learns his teenage niece, Paula, has gone missing in Manhattan, he cancels his much-needed vacation to Capri, to paradise, joking that “one island is just as good as the other.” Gian’s homecoming will be anything but smooth. Someone must always watch his back, and Detective Jennifer Fabini gets the job. A gifted officer with her own personal demons, Jennifer thinks she will be dealing with a peasant from the old country. The handsome, reserved, unrelenting Gian is a revelation: an irritant and a temptation – especially for a woman who has sworn off cops as lovers. Together the two must solve a disappearance that appears to be a kidnapping…but turns out to be a deadly trap. As they dash from the sun-struck villages of Italy to the darkest drug dens of New York, their journey links old-world honor and modern-day danger and ends in a dizzying explosion of the present and the past. Paradise City is Lorenzo Carcaterra’s richest entertainment to date, a book that is at once a sensational crime novel and a provocative exploration of his trademark themes: violence and innocence, love and revenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Carcaterra has written extensively for television and it shows in this melodramatic tale of war between the New York branch of the Italian Mafia and a lone, mob-busting supercop from Italy. Giancarlo Lo Manto has arrived from Naples on the trail of his recently kidnapped niece Paula, taken as bait for an assassination trap that Lo Manto must step into if he is to rescue the girl. Lo Manto's arch foe is Mafia boss Pete Rossi, a man so evil readers will sit wide-eyed as he coldly kills underling after underling with astonishing heartlessness. No one can doubt Carcaterra's firsthand knowledge of the mean streets of New York (see his bestselling memoir, Sleepers), his extensive vocabulary of cop-speak (Apaches) or his expertise regarding the city of Naples (Street Boys), but his made-for-TV writing may prove a stumbling block for more literary readers. Veteran cop-story aficionados will find that the eventual attraction between Lo Manto and partner Jennifer Fabini, detective daughter of NYPD legend Sal Fabini, comes as no surprise, and the connection between the cop and crime boss Rossi will garner few gasps. But those readers unafraid of a little purple in their prose (" 'Get ready to taste it, cop,' the Squid said. 'Get ready to die' ") will have a perfectly good time following Lo Manto and his unusual allies.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

As a child, Giancarlo Lo Manto lived on Manhattan's mean streets, encountering all sorts of mischief until, at 14, he moved with his family to a small town in Italy. Now a homicide and narcotics cop in Naples, Lo Manto returns to New York when his teenage niece, Paula, a foreign exchange student, disappears. Arranging for a temporary assignment to the NYPD, Lo Manto is fortunate to be partnered with Jennifer Fabini, a 10-year veteran on the force. "She knows the streets and I know the enemy," he tells the captain. But just who is that enemy? Signs point to the Camorra, the infamous Naples crime syndicate, whose influence carries all the way to the States. As a young cop, Lo Manto made it his business to know everything he could about the Camorra, but he is baffled by what the syndicate's connection might be to his own family. Carcaterra, a writer for NBC's Law & Order and the author of Street Boys (2002), tends to be long on drama and short on subtlety; he stays true to form here, though Lo Manto's characterization displays a bit more depth than many of the author's other swashbuckling leading men. Backed by a five-city author tour and numerous national media appearances, this comfortable mix of international thriller and police procedural is likely to draw a crowd. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged; Unabridged edition (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593559461
• ISBN-13: 978-1593559465
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.2 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,439,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes Revenge is Justice, May 13, 2008

By 

Vesta Irene (the Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paradise City: A Novel of Suspense (Mass Market Paperback)

While born in New York City, Giancarlo Lo Manto now is a cop in Naples, Italy. He ended up in Italy as a teenager after his father was killed by a don of the Camorra -- a known criminal organization. He made a promise to himself to get revenge for his father's death. He was working to stop illegal drug trafficking of drugs and other similar crimes with the intention to try and save families from the grief he himself had experienced.

Pete Rossi, who is the son of the man who had ordered his father's death, decides he wants to lure Lo Manto back to the city to die. He does it by having Lo Manto's niece Paula (an exchange student) turn up missing. Jennifer Fabini, a New York detective, is then assigned to help Lo Manto and realizes it puts her in the middle of something bigger than she expected. Lo Manto is a guy who always seems to know exactly what to do and has the right connections to get what he wants done.

A romance does end up developing between Jennifer and Lo Manto, but it's done in a way that I wondered why Carcaterra added it to the plot. Lorenzo Carcaterra is a producer and writer for the TV series Law & Order which makes sense of why some of the narrative reads like a TV script. It ends with an obvious showdown between Lo Manto and Rossi, but even though I saw it coming, was expecting it, was waiting for it I enjoyed it very much, probably because I like a good story about Revenge.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Middle aged housewife who wouldn't be caught dead watching Matlock (or the Simpsons )strikes back and says, November 23, 2005

By 

L. Schofield - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paradise City: A Novel (Hardcover)

this is an enjoyable read. Not great but good enough to have me search out his other novels. The ending is a bit much and the romance is gratuitious. Not all that orginal in plot or character but well written withal and some page turning invloved. Must go now and gnaw on my bone

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Action, Revenge and Thrills Galore, November 19, 2010

By 

Tracy Oshima (Long Beach, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paradise City: A Novel of Suspense (Mass Market Paperback)

This is an action packed thriller that revolves around the Camorra crime family and an Italian homicide detective. What I really enjoyed about this book was the similarities between the good guy (Giancarlo Lo Manto) and the bad guy (Joe Rossi). I couldn't help but get the feeling that these two characters could have been friends under different circumstances. Their main difference, of course, is the side of the law on which they stand. Gian being a homicide detective in Italy and Rossi being a mobster.

Gian became acquainted with the Camorra, run by Don Nicola Rossi, at the tender age of fifteen, when they shot down his father in New York. Gian's mother decided it would be best to return to Naples, and this is where he saw the daily operations of the mob, the power they had and the killers they produced. In Gian's desire to make things right, he becomes a homicide detective on what is called the most dangerous beat in all Europe. His goal is to stop the Camorra before they can have a chance to leave Naples, therefore never making it over to New York.

This does not make the New York faction of the Camorra happy at all. Joe Rossi decides he must take out Gian and devises a plan to get him to New York, by the kidnapping of Gian's niece. Gian goes to New York to rescue her, but also to take out Joe Rossi once and for all.

What follows is a lot of great action, witty dialog, revenge, thrills galore, and even a little romance. PARADISE CITY will pulled me right in and kept me on the edge of my seat all the way through. If you are a fan of crime thrillers, this is a book for you.