Trinities

Trinities is a book that explores the psychology of the two main characters, Johnny, a brilliant family man (read mafia) who is trapped in a low paying union job despite his family ties, and his uncle, an even more brilliant mafia don (retired) who is trapped in his dying body and the laxidazical world he views through his aging eyes. As Johnny longs to escape through midlife crisis angst, his uncle longs for one last splash of the glory days before he dies. If the reader cannot truly immerse the heart into these two personalities, the reader will lose perspective and simply classify the book as a genre piece of some sort. I have listened to this book on audio cassette at least seven times - until the tapes gave out - and will buy it again just to have it in my library. Give it a shot. It's good.

This is one of the best crime thrillers I've read, and I think that's because it reads like nonfiction -- there's strong emotion and character development, but it's told through the action, the culture, and the settings, not so much by getting into the individual characters' heads. I couldn't put this book down. Tosches' Lower Manhattan locales -- Chinatown, Little Italy -- are right on: gritty, rich with character and history, uniquely beautiful and scary at once. The characters are not-so-loosely based on real figures in NYC organized crime. For fans of journalistic accounts of crime and city life this is a must read.

What we have here is basically well-dressed pulp fiction (which, incidentally, I mean as a compliment). Not everyone, especially these days, may enjoy Tosches' iconoclastic embrace of the grotesque, but those who like their humor dark & their narratives darker certainly will. Stylistically, the prose runs to the pretentious at times ("a tumescense that was more than urethral"? Please.), but is generally lyrical & pleasing. Definitely an above-average piece of genre fiction.

One of the few intelligent novels about crime and business - definetely not politically correct, but a great understanding of human feelings on several levels. And it is a great thriller at the same time, keeping the tension up constantly, but enjoyable when read again. Story basics: some old men of sicilian and asian mafia try to leave their mark on the world before dying - by conquering the worldwide drug markets. The main protagonist is much younger, but drawn into the nightmare which results - by his own (understandable) reasons. Tosches actually makes the reader understand the reasoning and at the same time gives a de-mystifying introduction into asian philosophy. With this he also establishes the sad parallels between legitimate business and criminal business thinking - which can constantly seen in corporate politics.