Prizzis Honor
Book description
A darkly funny novel of mobsters, murder, and marriage: “The surprise ending will knock your reading glasses off.” —The New York Times
Charley Partanna works as a hitman for the Prizzis, New York’s most dangerous crime family. When he meets Irene Walker, an LA-based tax consultant, it’s pretty much love…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Prizzis Honor as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Richard Condon shows the mob as a family of degenerates, violent felons who are still human beings who also fall in love. The focus on the novel is how a hit man, looking to embellish his career, dates a big mob guy’s daughter, only to fall in love with another killer who is a woman. She has been hired to kill him but she also is in love with him. Published in 1982 , the novel captures the entanglements of a soap opera with real bite. The movie with Jack Nicholson is also top rate.
From Richard's list on the darkly insane world of NYC in the 1980s.
Charley is a member of the Prizzi crime family, an underboss and top hitter, whose just done the family a good turn by killing a traitor who stole three-quarters of a million dollars from the family. That's nothing new for Charley, just a day's work, but he discovers, first, that his new girlfriend was the dead man's wife, and second, that she's a contract killer for the mob and has just taken a contract out on him.
Richard Condon is notable for his satire novels, particularly The Manchurian Candidate which Hollywood stripped of its humor, both political and crime,…
From Brandon's list on American mobs.
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