Omerta: Amazon.de: Mario Puzo, Michael Imperioli: Englische Bücher

Amazon.co.uk

If you're one of the many keen to be gripped again by the power and drama of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, rejoice at the appearance of his new book Omertà. We are once again in the dark, fascinating world of the Mafia. And this is a saga perfectly suited to the audiobook medium: a compelling tale that unfolds with a cold, glittering fascination. And who better than Joe Mantegna, star of Homicide, Bugsy and (most tellingly) the Godfather saga itself? His perfectly nuanced, dispassionate reading is spot on.

Omertà is the Sicilian code of silence, and is the essential element by which the Mafia has maintained its power over the centuries. But (as in the Corleone saga) Puzo is interested in the way in which changing times force organised crime to adapt, however painful the process. The code is tested when a mob boss is brutally murdered in New York, and both his nephew, Astorre, and the New York FBI chief, Cilke, inaugurate investigations into the killing. It soon becomes clear to both men that a grim conspiracy has spread its tentacles across rival gangs, corrupt bankers and even the courts. Astorre and Cilke both find that much blood must be spilled before the killers of Don Aprile are found--and there are many (on both sides of the law) who will do their best to stop them.

Puzo handles his themes with customary panache, and remains an old hand at moral equivalence: however much we may disapprove, we remain riveted by the implacable cold-bloodedness of his protagonists. --Barry Forshaw -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: H�rkassette .

Amazon.com

Omerta, the third novel in Mario Puzo's Mafia trilogy, is infinitely better than the third Godfather film, and most movies in fact. Besides colorful characters and snappy dialogue, it's got a knotty, gratifying, just-complex-enough plot and plenty of movie-like scenes. The newly retired Mafioso Don Raymonde Aprile attends his grandson's confirmation at St. Patrick's in New York, handing each kid a gold coin. Long shot: "Brilliant sunshine etched the image of that great cathedral into the streets around it." Medium shot: "The girls in frail cobwebby white lace dresses, the boys [with] traditional red neckties knitted at their throats to ward off the Devil." Close-up: "The first bullet hit the Don square in the forehead. The second bullet tore out his throat."

More crucial than the tersely described violence is the emotional setting: a traditional, loving clan menaced by traditional vendettas. With Don Aprile hit, the family's fate lies in the strong hands of his adopted nephew from Sicily, Astorre. The Don kept his own kids sheltered from the Mafia: one son is an army officer; another is a TV exec; his daughter Nicole (the most developed character of the three) is an ace lawyer who liked to debate the Don on the death penalty. "Mercy is a vice, a pretension to powers we do not have ... an unpardonable offense to the victim," the Don maintained. Astorre, a macaroni importer and affable amateur singer, was secretly trained to carry on the Don's work. Now his job is to show no mercy.

But who did the hit? Was it Kurt Cilke, the morally tormented FBI man who recently jailed most of the Mafia bosses? Or Timmona Portella, the Mob boss Cilke still wants to collar? How about Marriano Rubio, the womanizing, epicurean Peruvian diplomat who wants Nicole in bed--did he also want her papa's head?

If you didn't know Puzo wrote Omerta, it would be no mystery. His marks are all over it: lean prose, a romance with the Old Country, a taste for olives in barrels, a jaunty cynicism ("You cannot send six billionaires to prison," says Cilke's boss. "Not in a democracy"), an affection for characters with flawed hearts, like Rudolfo the $1,500-an-hour sexual massage therapist, or his short-tempered client Aspinella, the one-eyed NYPD detective. The simultaneous courtship of cheery Mafia tramp Rosie by identical hit-man twins Frankie and Stace Sturzo makes you fall in love with them all--and feel a genuine pang when blood proves thicker than eros.

This fitting capstone to Puzo's career is optioned for a film, and Michael Imperioli of TV's The Sopranos narrates the audiocassette version of the novel. But why wait for the movie? Omerta is a big, old-fashioned movie in its own right. --Tim Appelo -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Guter, spannender Mafia-Roman 17. September 2001

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

Mario Puzo, der Großmeister des Mafia-Romans hat mit Omerta eine durchaus spannende, unterhaltsame und gut geschriebene Mafia-Geschichte geschaffen, einen "typischen Puzo" eben. Allerdings muß ich sagen, daß die Qualität von Omerta an die des Paten nicht einmal annähernd heranreicht. Omerta zu lesen ist sicher keine Zeitverschwendung, aber wer den Paten kennt und von Puzo eine ähnlich geniale Geschichte erwartet, wird enttäuscht sein.

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A good early draft 1. August 2000

Von M. Desoer

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

It is very clear to me that Mario Puzo either hadn't finished this book when he passed away or, at the very most, it was a first draft. With due respect to him, his editors should have taken a heavier pen to this draft, which was full of awkward writing and undeveloped points. (The fact that this work is so much briefer than Mr. Puzo's earlier works lends credence to the conclusion that it needed to be fleshed out.)

That being said, this was not a horrible book, but it was not what one would expect from someone as talented as Mr. Puzo. The characters were, for the most part, two-dimensional and some of the relationships not fully clarified.

Don Aprile, who has survived the FBI incursions into the Mafia, is gunned down by unkown assailants. He has annointed the nephew that he raised as his "heir apparent" to the remaning family businesses, as he carefully has sheltered his children from the less savory aspects of his life. The story line was interesting but a little hard to follow (I didn't think that the underlying attempted transaction made sense). This is definitely not the best novel written by Mr. Puzo.

A Quick and Dissapointing Read 31. Juli 2000

Von michael luciano

I was thrilled to learn that we would get to read one last book by the great Mario Puzo. Unfortunately by the time I was done I almost wished that The Last Don had remained as the book that capped Puzo's career. Omerta reads more like an outline for a movie than a novel and the characters, while interesting, are painfully underdeveloped. It would be unfair to compare this book with The Godfather, so I won't bother, but even taken on it's own merits, Omerta can only be decribed as a dissapointment. It is a great story with great potential that is not met. Wait for the paperback.