- Mass Market Paperback: 333 pages
- Publisher: Hard Case Crime (5 April 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 085768311X
- ISBN-13: 978-0857683113
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 2.3 x 17.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 306,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
THE ONLY THING HARDER THAN GETTING INTO THE MOB IS GETTING OUT.
For Anthony Russo, an Atlantic City mobster’s son, the chances of escaping a life of crime are slim. They hinge on his plan to back a washed-up boxer’s comeback bid, and that, in turn, hinges on winning the help of a sexy round card girl who’s gone toe-to-toe with the current champion – in the bedroom…
For Anthony Russo, an Atlantic City mobster’s son, the chances of escaping a life of crime are slim. They hinge on his plan to back a washed-up boxer’s comeback bid, and that, in turn, hinges on winning the help of a sexy round card girl who’s gone toe-to-toe with the current champion – in the bedroom…
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Casino Moon feels surprisingly epic for a Hard Case Crime selection, and, indeed, Casino Moon starts out like some sort of Tolkienian (or Martinesque) adventure. Our hero, Anthony Russo, is the prodigal son. His adopted father, Vin, is a sort of mid-level Mafia hood. Russo wants to go his own way. He sees the corruption and the grinding servitude of the mob life and he desires something better. Russo's ambitions are also overshadowed by memories of his real dad. Like any good fantasy novel, his true lineage is royalty. Michael Dillon was the prince of mobsters - a man with sharp suits, big dreams and, ultimately, a bullet in the face.
Swap bullet for sword and mob for throne and this really is the set-up of a fantasy doorstop. But that greatly oversimplifies the character of Anthony Russo. It rapidly becomes clear that Russo isn't disgusted with the mob life out of some moral principle. Russo crusades under one banner: Anthony Russo. He's crushed by debt to his kingpin uncle-in-law, his contracting business is rubbish, his wife and children are a stifling, unappreciative mess... Russo just wants out. He identifies with the "legitimate" casino tycoons of Atlantic City who saw their chances, took them, and now get to wear sharp suits and have great hair.
Russo's chance comes with Elijah Barton - an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer. Barton is savvy, angry ex-champion with the desperate need to prove himself one final time. Russo sees Barton's last chance as his own first step. Borrowing more money and throwing himself into the conniving world of boxing (and Russo thought the mob was dirty), he commits himself wholly to getting Barton the big fight. (And making himself rich out of it.)
Although Russo's ambition is strangely admirable, his methods are not. And the depths to which he'll sink in order to succeed soon have the reader questioning his motives as well. Is everyone around Russo really that awful? Is he really that trapped? Mr. Blauner further muddies the waters by populating the book with an admirable cast of dubious characters. Elijah Barton is perhaps the most straightforward, if only because he's distilled his entire life's ambition into a single physical, visceral goal. His success and failure rests wholly in his own (massive) hands - something that earns Russo's grudging admiration. But Russo's supposedly-stifling family - his step-father, Vin, and his uncle by marriage, Teddy - they're not purely malevolent figures in ill-fitting suits. They're murderous mobsters, sure, but they're also tough old men with their own health problems, financial struggles and growing insecurities. The author scatters the book with scenes that don't involve Russo at all, showing the reader that Vin and Teddy aren't the Machiavellian harpies that our protagonist thinks.
There's something of Hamlet in the family relationship, exacerbated when tales of Russo's (blood) father's murder suddenly resurface. Russo is utterly self-obsessed and blind to the consequences of his actions. Teddy and Vin are a generation away, starting to confess and regret their own immature actions, gradually learning to prioritise family over ambition. And Russo's poor wife, Carla, is the Ophelia of Atlantic City - adored by her uncle Teddy, abandoned by the relentlessly self-absorbed Russo.
I've always loved the Arthur Hailey school of fiction - stories that delvs into the microscopic detail of a organisation and then shows what happens when it collapses under extreme circumstances. Casino Moon has the feel of the final chapters of a Hailey novel - the dying days of the Atlantic City mob with a bit of boxing sprinkled in for verisimilitude. But Hailey's books were about isolated people, interconnected by an impersonal system. Mr. Blauner's is the reverse - positing that people are invariably, inescapably connected to one another, no matter where they are or what they do. It makes for a tough book, as the protagonist's primary goal - escape - is immediately recognisable as unachievable. Russo will never be free of his past and his family, and the more he struggles to escape them, the tighter his binds become.
Swap bullet for sword and mob for throne and this really is the set-up of a fantasy doorstop. But that greatly oversimplifies the character of Anthony Russo. It rapidly becomes clear that Russo isn't disgusted with the mob life out of some moral principle. Russo crusades under one banner: Anthony Russo. He's crushed by debt to his kingpin uncle-in-law, his contracting business is rubbish, his wife and children are a stifling, unappreciative mess... Russo just wants out. He identifies with the "legitimate" casino tycoons of Atlantic City who saw their chances, took them, and now get to wear sharp suits and have great hair.
Russo's chance comes with Elijah Barton - an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer. Barton is savvy, angry ex-champion with the desperate need to prove himself one final time. Russo sees Barton's last chance as his own first step. Borrowing more money and throwing himself into the conniving world of boxing (and Russo thought the mob was dirty), he commits himself wholly to getting Barton the big fight. (And making himself rich out of it.)
Although Russo's ambition is strangely admirable, his methods are not. And the depths to which he'll sink in order to succeed soon have the reader questioning his motives as well. Is everyone around Russo really that awful? Is he really that trapped? Mr. Blauner further muddies the waters by populating the book with an admirable cast of dubious characters. Elijah Barton is perhaps the most straightforward, if only because he's distilled his entire life's ambition into a single physical, visceral goal. His success and failure rests wholly in his own (massive) hands - something that earns Russo's grudging admiration. But Russo's supposedly-stifling family - his step-father, Vin, and his uncle by marriage, Teddy - they're not purely malevolent figures in ill-fitting suits. They're murderous mobsters, sure, but they're also tough old men with their own health problems, financial struggles and growing insecurities. The author scatters the book with scenes that don't involve Russo at all, showing the reader that Vin and Teddy aren't the Machiavellian harpies that our protagonist thinks.
There's something of Hamlet in the family relationship, exacerbated when tales of Russo's (blood) father's murder suddenly resurface. Russo is utterly self-obsessed and blind to the consequences of his actions. Teddy and Vin are a generation away, starting to confess and regret their own immature actions, gradually learning to prioritise family over ambition. And Russo's poor wife, Carla, is the Ophelia of Atlantic City - adored by her uncle Teddy, abandoned by the relentlessly self-absorbed Russo.
I've always loved the Arthur Hailey school of fiction - stories that delvs into the microscopic detail of a organisation and then shows what happens when it collapses under extreme circumstances. Casino Moon has the feel of the final chapters of a Hailey novel - the dying days of the Atlantic City mob with a bit of boxing sprinkled in for verisimilitude. But Hailey's books were about isolated people, interconnected by an impersonal system. Mr. Blauner's is the reverse - positing that people are invariably, inescapably connected to one another, no matter where they are or what they do. It makes for a tough book, as the protagonist's primary goal - escape - is immediately recognisable as unachievable. Russo will never be free of his past and his family, and the more he struggles to escape them, the tighter his binds become.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Top notch tale of corruption
19 Feb 2006
Format:Paperback
This is about a guy whose father was killed by the mob, but who is then raised by another guy who's IN the mob. Then he marries the daughter of a local mob boss so for all intents and purposes he's in the mob himself.
But he doesn't wanna be.
But he is. And it's the obligation stuff that pounds away at his soul, that gnaws at him, that makes him nuts, and that ultimately leads to his downfall. He has two kids; he meets another woman; he tries to make money from boxing. The author, Peter Blauner, knows exactly how to handle his characters--how to give them dialogue that sounds exactly like they should be speaking to each other and how to have them do the things they would do to make the reader get grabbed by the story.
This has no happy ending, but I'm not spoiling anything by saying that. It's a really well written piece of work and makes the minutes fly by. Too bad it wasn't made into a film (my favorite medium). Too often, mob stories don't really bring out how corrupting an association with the mob can be to someone not really in the mob, yet in it by association. Here's one that does and that nails it, perfectly.
Highly recommended--nifty.
But he doesn't wanna be.
But he is. And it's the obligation stuff that pounds away at his soul, that gnaws at him, that makes him nuts, and that ultimately leads to his downfall. He has two kids; he meets another woman; he tries to make money from boxing. The author, Peter Blauner, knows exactly how to handle his characters--how to give them dialogue that sounds exactly like they should be speaking to each other and how to have them do the things they would do to make the reader get grabbed by the story.
This has no happy ending, but I'm not spoiling anything by saying that. It's a really well written piece of work and makes the minutes fly by. Too bad it wasn't made into a film (my favorite medium). Too often, mob stories don't really bring out how corrupting an association with the mob can be to someone not really in the mob, yet in it by association. Here's one that does and that nails it, perfectly.
Highly recommended--nifty.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
More than a mob story
20 May 2009
Format:Mass Market Paperback
More than a gritty mob story, which it is, this is a novel--filled with tragedy, redemption, and visions of love and loyalty. Blauner's characterizations are excellent, with heroes and villains who share flawed personalities along with human qualities.
It's a thick book for Hard Case Crime loyalists, but breezes by like an off-shore wind from the Atlantic. The 1990's setting of Atlantic City hasn't changed much over the years... and certainly the excitement of this book hasn't dimished.
It's a thick book for Hard Case Crime loyalists, but breezes by like an off-shore wind from the Atlantic. The 1990's setting of Atlantic City hasn't changed much over the years... and certainly the excitement of this book hasn't dimished.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Ambitious gangland epic
20 Oct 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Casino Moon feels surprisingly epic for a Hard Case Crime selection, and, indeed, Casino Moon starts out like some sort of Tolkienian (or Martinesque) adventure. Our hero, Anthony Russo, is the prodigal son. His adopted father, Vin, is a sort of mid-level Mafia hood. Russo wants to go his own way. He sees the corruption and the grinding servitude of the mob life and he desires something better. Russo's ambitions are also overshadowed by memories of his real dad. Like any good fantasy novel, his true lineage is royalty. Michael Dillon was the prince of mobsters - a man with sharp suits, big dreams and, ultimately, a bullet in the face.
Swap bullet for sword and mob for throne and this really is the set-up of a fantasy doorstop. But that greatly oversimplifies the character of Anthony Russo. It rapidly becomes clear that Russo isn't disgusted with the mob life out of some moral principle. Russo crusades under one banner: Anthony Russo. He's crushed by debt to his kingpin uncle-in-law, his contracting business is rubbish, his wife and children are a stifling, unappreciative mess... Russo just wants out. He identifies with the "legitimate" casino tycoons of Atlantic City who saw their chances, took them, and now get to wear sharp suits and have great hair.
Russo's chance comes with Elijah Barton - an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer. Barton is savvy, angry ex-champion with the desperate need to prove himself one final time. Russo sees Barton's last chance as his own first step. Borrowing more money and throwing himself into the conniving world of boxing (and Russo thought the mob was dirty), he commits himself wholly to getting Barton the big fight. (And making himself rich out of it.)
Although Russo's ambition is strangely admirable, his methods are not. And the depths to which he'll sink in order to succeed soon have the reader questioning his motives as well. Is everyone around Russo really that awful? Is he really that trapped? Mr. Blauner further muddies the waters by populating the book with an admirable cast of dubious characters. Elijah Barton is perhaps the most straightforward, if only because he's distilled his entire life's ambition into a single physical, visceral goal. His success and failure rests wholly in his own (massive) hands - something that earns Russo's grudging admiration. But Russo's supposedly-stifling family - his step-father, Vin, and his uncle by marriage, Teddy - they're not purely malevolent figures in ill-fitting suits. They're murderous mobsters, sure, but they're also tough old men with their own health problems, financial struggles and growing insecurities. The author scatters the book with scenes that don't involve Russo at all, showing the reader that Vin and Teddy aren't the Machiavellian harpies that our protagonist thinks.
There's something of Hamlet in the family relationship, exacerbated when tales of Russo's (blood) father's murder suddenly resurface. Russo is utterly self-obsessed and blind to the consequences of his actions. Teddy and Vin are a generation away, starting to confess and regret their own immature actions, gradually learning to prioritise family over ambition. And Russo's poor wife, Carla, is the Ophelia of Atlantic City - adored by her uncle Teddy, abandoned by the relentlessly self-absorbed Russo.
I've always loved the Arthur Hailey school of fiction - stories that delvs into the microscopic detail of a organisation and then shows what happens when it collapses under extreme circumstances. Casino Moon has the feel of the final chapters of a Hailey novel - the dying days of the Atlantic City mob with a bit of boxing sprinkled in for verisimilitude. But Hailey's books were about isolated people, interconnected by an impersonal system. Mr. Blauner's is the reverse - positing that people are invariably, inescapably connected to one another, no matter where they are or what they do. It makes for a tough book, as the protagonist's primary goal - escape - is immediately recognisable as unachievable. Russo will never be free of his past and his family, and the more he struggles to escape them, the tighter his binds become.
Swap bullet for sword and mob for throne and this really is the set-up of a fantasy doorstop. But that greatly oversimplifies the character of Anthony Russo. It rapidly becomes clear that Russo isn't disgusted with the mob life out of some moral principle. Russo crusades under one banner: Anthony Russo. He's crushed by debt to his kingpin uncle-in-law, his contracting business is rubbish, his wife and children are a stifling, unappreciative mess... Russo just wants out. He identifies with the "legitimate" casino tycoons of Atlantic City who saw their chances, took them, and now get to wear sharp suits and have great hair.
Russo's chance comes with Elijah Barton - an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer. Barton is savvy, angry ex-champion with the desperate need to prove himself one final time. Russo sees Barton's last chance as his own first step. Borrowing more money and throwing himself into the conniving world of boxing (and Russo thought the mob was dirty), he commits himself wholly to getting Barton the big fight. (And making himself rich out of it.)
Although Russo's ambition is strangely admirable, his methods are not. And the depths to which he'll sink in order to succeed soon have the reader questioning his motives as well. Is everyone around Russo really that awful? Is he really that trapped? Mr. Blauner further muddies the waters by populating the book with an admirable cast of dubious characters. Elijah Barton is perhaps the most straightforward, if only because he's distilled his entire life's ambition into a single physical, visceral goal. His success and failure rests wholly in his own (massive) hands - something that earns Russo's grudging admiration. But Russo's supposedly-stifling family - his step-father, Vin, and his uncle by marriage, Teddy - they're not purely malevolent figures in ill-fitting suits. They're murderous mobsters, sure, but they're also tough old men with their own health problems, financial struggles and growing insecurities. The author scatters the book with scenes that don't involve Russo at all, showing the reader that Vin and Teddy aren't the Machiavellian harpies that our protagonist thinks.
There's something of Hamlet in the family relationship, exacerbated when tales of Russo's (blood) father's murder suddenly resurface. Russo is utterly self-obsessed and blind to the consequences of his actions. Teddy and Vin are a generation away, starting to confess and regret their own immature actions, gradually learning to prioritise family over ambition. And Russo's poor wife, Carla, is the Ophelia of Atlantic City - adored by her uncle Teddy, abandoned by the relentlessly self-absorbed Russo.
I've always loved the Arthur Hailey school of fiction - stories that delvs into the microscopic detail of a organisation and then shows what happens when it collapses under extreme circumstances. Casino Moon has the feel of the final chapters of a Hailey novel - the dying days of the Atlantic City mob with a bit of boxing sprinkled in for verisimilitude. But Hailey's books were about isolated people, interconnected by an impersonal system. Mr. Blauner's is the reverse - positing that people are invariably, inescapably connected to one another, no matter where they are or what they do. It makes for a tough book, as the protagonist's primary goal - escape - is immediately recognisable as unachievable. Russo will never be free of his past and his family, and the more he struggles to escape them, the tighter his binds become.
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