As a fifteen-year-old, Giancarlo Lo Manto learned about injustice the hard way. His father was gunned down by the Camorra, the murderous clan run by Don Nicola Rossi. When his mother moved him back to his family's ancestral home in Naples, Gian found himself face-to-face with the source of the mob's strength, the spring that spawned it's deadly killers.
Today, twenty-three years later, he is a dogged detective on the Naples police force, homicide division, the most dangerous beat in Europe. He is the nemesis of all who export evil, the man who stops it before it spreads overseas. His efforts have not gone unnoticed. "The strength of Naples reinforces the muscle of New York" - and now the two worlds are about to collide.
In the highest towers of the most expensive streets of New York City, Pete Rossi, the son of Don Nicola, has decided to bring Gian back to America - permanently. When Gian learns his teenage niece, Paula, has gone missing in Manhattan, he cancels his much-needed vacation to Capri, to paradise, joking that "one island is just as good as the other."
Gian's homecoming will be anything but smooth. Someone must always watch his back, and Detective Jennifer Fabini gets the job. A gifted officer with her own personal demons, Jennifer thinks she will be dealing with a peasant from the old country. The handsome, reserved, unrelenting Gian is a revelation: an irritant and a temptation - especially for a woman who has sworn off cops as lovers. Together the two must solve a disappearance that appears to be a kidnapping...but turns out to be a deadly trap.
As they dash from the sun-struck villages of Italy to the darkest drug dens of New York, their journey links old-world honor and modern-day danger and ends in a dizzying explosion of the present and the past. Paradise City is Lorenzo Carcaterra's richest entertainment to date, a book that is at once a sensational crime novel and a provocative exploration of his trademark themes: violence and innocence, love and revenge.
It's strange that nothing in this story connects to its title. While characters, for the most part, are well developed and interesting, the plot is very thin. A second Italian crime empire operating peacefully alongside the Mafia? Maybe that's the "Paradise" part? Reader David Colacci is the absolute saving grace here. His presentation is smooth and poised, strong and confident. Characters stand out as Colacci gives each a comfortable and well-paced vocal identity. But Colacci's success in giving this story life collapses with the sappy conclusion. Only a TV writer could mangle a reasonable story line this badly. T.J.M. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of Street Boys, Gangster, A Safe Place, and the New York Times bestsellers Sleepers and Apaches. He is a writer and producer for Law & Order, and has also written scripts for other television series and motion pictures.
