Who Is Lou Sciortino?: A Novel about Murder, the Movies, and Mafia Family Values

by HowardCurtis (Translator), OttavioCappellani (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $18.96

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.29

  Metropolitan Catania, and Tony's barbecues are a neighbourhood sensation. Each weekend the party girls rub shoulders with elegant Mafiosi - and no wonder, since Tony's uncle Sal runs the local show. When a policeman is shot in uncle Mimmo's shop, it isn't your ordinary murder. Lou Sciortino - gin and tonic in hand, newly arrived from his safe job laundering mob money in New York - finds more in the Old Country than he'd bargained for. This is sunny Sicily, where no one is truly anyone's friend, killers have sidelines in amaretti, the nicest people can still bring on the apocalypse, and grandfathers are to be feared above all men...Meet the family that makes the Sopranos look like the Waltons. 'Cappellani's Catania has the brutality of Quentin Tarantino and the trash of Pedro Almodovar' Corriere della Sera 'Brilliant dialogue ...All the plot and rhythm of great cinema' Vanity Fair 'Finally the post-modern and metropolitan Sicily has found its ideal chronicler ...A completely exhilarating story' La Repubblica

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $4.11

  Metropolitan Catania, and Tony's barbeques are a neighbourhood sensation. Each weekend the party girls rub shoulders with elegant Mafiosi and no wonder, since Tony's uncle Sal runs the local show. And so had the finger not pointed at two of Sal's most trusted men, and at Nick Palumbo, Tony's best friend, it would have been an ordinary murder. But it wasn't, and Lou Sciortino, newly arrived from New York, finds himself on the trail. Gin and tonic in hand, negotiating hairdressers, directors, small shopkeepers, Sicilian wives, and far from his safe job laundering mob money at Starship Pictures, the life he finds in sunny Sicily is not the one his over-protective family had in mind.In a world where no one is truly anyone's friend, killers have sidelines in amaretti, the nicest people can still bring on the apocalypse, and grandfathers are to be feared above all men can the inimitable Lou solve the crime? Ottavio Cappellani's exhilarating debut has taken Europe by storm: darkly funny and truly stylish, this is a page-turner that sets its sights on Italy's biggest cliche and explodes it from every angle. Cappellani's Catania has the brutality of Quentin Tarantino and the trash of Pedro Almodovar - Corriere della Sera. Brilliant dialogue...All the plot and rhythm of great cinema - Vanity Fair . Finally the post-modern and metropolitan Sicily has found its ideal chronicler...A completely exhilarating story - La Repubblica . A debut novel as sharp as a knife - GQ .