From Publishers Weekly
For anyone who has seen the film of Condon's Prizzi's Honor, it will be impossible to read this "prequel" set a decade earlier without visualizing Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston as Charley Partanna and Maerose Prizzi. Fortunately, that identification only enhances the pleasure of this entertaining depiction of high-level corruption. As in the first novel, Charley Partanna, trusted underboss and hitman for the Prizzi crime empire, has fallen for a woman who is not what she appears to be. In this case, it is Mardell La Tour, a showgirl in a Prizzi-owned nightclub. Mardell is, in fact, the daughter of a wealthy society family, and her showgirl act is only one of a series of identities she has adopted. Enter Maerose, the strong and beautiful granddaughter of Don Corrado Prizzi, who is ambitious to become the first woman boss of the Prizzis, a dream that requires Charley to marry her. Obsessed with Mardell yet pulled by loyalty and lust to Maerose, Charley is trapped between them, all the while carrying out his regular duties as the Prizzi enforcer. Condon serves up this zesty mix with good humor, broadside slams at politicians and evangelism, and generous helpings of Sicilian food.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Wealth and power as wellsprings of criminality (and vice versa) have been an obsessive theme in Condon's fiction; so too has been the figure of the murderously conniving woman. Characteristically, these concerns are at the heart of this novel, a sequel to Prizzi's Honor , that once again has Charley Partanna caught in a romantic triangle with Maerose Prizzi and a gorgeous blonde. Besides explaining why Maerose was banished from the Prizzi family Condon explains why she continues to pursue him in the other novel: she must marry Charley to fulfill her plan to be the first woman Don. As usual with Condon, the characters seldom seem more than props for the plot, or whips in his satiric lashing of contemporary America. The satire here is often heavy, but the improbable, goofy tale will keep most readers zipping along. That and the success of the film of Prizzi's Honor should create demand. Literary Guild main selection. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
