THE LAST HITMAN

5 stars out of 5

I follow the “Youngstown Mob” on Facebook (yes, it’s a real thing). I’ve been to every single town mentioned in this book, most of them many times (in fact, I lived in one of them for 50 years). Many of my friends claim to have a grandma who makes the best spaghetti sauce in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia put together. To say I enjoyed the heck out of this book, then, would be an understatement – the goings-on ring true even though some of the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

This is the self-told story of Angelo Cipriani, a high-school dropout from the Ohio Valley who ended up finding a job in the powerful Fortuna Crime Family. Although his non-full-blooded Italian heritage prohibited him from becoming a “made” man within the mafia (well, at least for many years), he was always loyal to the core. The family boss, “Big Tommy,” loved him like a brother, and Big Tommy’s son (Little Tommy, of course) called him Uncle Ange. One fine day, Angelo was told that his loyalty had overcome DNA and he would be accepted in the inner circle as a made man. And then he got instructions on what, exactly, he needed to do to make that happen.

But time has a way of changing things, and that includes the mob landscape (I’m not sure what the most recent suspected mob-related murder was in Youngstown, Ohio – a few stones’ throws from my home – but I do recall one in 1991 in particular that remains unsolved to this day). Angelo’s “nephew” Little Tommy is in charge now, and he’s taken his troops into areas of crime his late father once railed against. And now, Angelo has become about as worthless as a screen door on a submarine. Amid his feelings of stress, anxiety and betrayal, who should appear but a friendly neighborhood FBI agent – one who wants Angelo to rat on his compadres in exchange for Witness Protection.

So what’s an aging, maybe even not long for this world but still loyal to the core mob guy to do? That’s the issue Angelo faces, and he takes readers on an up-close-and-personal (and often chuckle-evoking) journey through time as he struggles with his final decision. For me, it was a highly entertaining journey, and I heartily thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to ride the bus by way of a pre-release copy. Eccellente!

The Last Hitman by Robin Yocum (Crooked Lane Books, December 2006); 331 pp.

THE PRISON GUARD'S SON

5 stars out of 5

Former private investigator Finn Harding lost his license a few years back, but that hasn't slowed him down a whit. Granted, he has to be more careful about running afoul of the law, but he's been making a decent living by operating in the shadows of the underground. This time, he's contacted by the father of a son who was tortured and murdered some 30 years ago in Parkersburg, West Virginia. All these years later, the intent is to find the two who did the deed and who, at the time, were just 9 years old. Tried and convicted as adults, they spent only a few years in a juvenile prison before being released. Problem is, it appears they disappeared into the government's witness protection program and now could be anywhere in the world.

Finn is a bit torn because taking the case means he'll have to be away from his Cincinnati home, the young daughter he sees on weekends and an ex-wife who seems to be leaning toward reconciliation (he won't miss his Columbo-loving father, with whom he makes his home, nearly as much). Then too, he has ethical concerns over what the father intends to do to the pair after they're found; but in the end, the details of the murder are so gruesome that Finn sets his worries aside and agrees to help.

As expected, locating the pair isn't easy, given that their original identities have been wiped off the face of earth as we know it. So here and there, Finn enlists help from a few friends - all interesting in their own rights - who have ways of ferreting out background information on just about anyone anywhere. The search takes him from Parkersburg to Texas and Tennessee - and quickly puts him in the crosshairs of a female FBI agent who's determined to thwart his efforts and let the two sleeping dogs lie where they were planted lo those many years ago. 

That also means finding the pair will prove more difficult than it might otherwise be - and involves a lot of boring grunt work. Finn spends hours, for instance, watching a suspect's home for activity as he tries to make a positive identification ("Stakeouts are worse than anal fissures and church," he quips at one point). But eventually, he gets what he's after.

And that's the end of that. Or not: Although the culprits have been located, Finn learns details about their current lives that make him think twice about revealing their whereabouts to the murdered boy's father. He also learns he's not the only one who was hired; someone else has a vested interest in finding the culprits - someone who's perfectly willing and extremely able to take out anyone who gets in his way, including Finn himself.

For the record, this is the third in the Finn series, but it stands well on its own. In fact, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the first, The Shadow Broker, which I received via NetGalley in exchange for a review. Somehow, the next one, Scar Tissue, got lost in my ever-growing stack of to-read books (an oversight I fully intend to rectify as soon as possible), but when the author offered me the chance to read and review this one, saying yes was a no-brainer. Admittedly, my interest in the series as a whole is heightened because I grew up not far from Cincinnati, and I really enjoy reading books set in places I know fairly well (now that I'm in the northeastern part of the Buckeye State, another favorite author is Les Roberts, whose P.I. Milan Jacovich lives in Cleveland).

This one hooked me with mention of Parkersburg, where my husband and I have spent a number of vacation hours as we poked our way in and around historic Marietta (just across the Ohio River). If anything, Book No. 3 is even better than the first one, and I don't hesitate to say this is one of the best series of its kind that I've read in a while. Highly recommended! 

The Prison Guard's Son by Trace Conger (Black Mill Books, July 2016); 236 pp.

THE STRIKER

Let me fill you in on a little-known fact: I am not - let me repeat that, not - a history buff. Back when I finished the first of what would be three basic history classes in college, in fact, I changed my major simply so I could avoid taking the other two. Honest.

So when I saw the period setting of this book, the fifth in Clive Cussler's series featuring early 1900s detective Isaac Bell, I was more than a little reluctant to start reading. Then I learned that it takes place in and around the coal mines of West Virginia and Pennsylvania not far from my home at a time when labor unions were trying to gain a foothold. Vilified by mine owners, union organizers were targeted, roughed up and even killed as they  attempted to win higher pay and safer working conditions for workers in this extremely hazardous, but exceedingly profitable, industry.

This is the fourth in the Bell series written in collaboration with author Justin Scott, an established writer of several novels under his own name and the pen name Paul Garrison - for whatever that is worth. I've read and enjoyed other books by Cussler, but not any in this series; that, too, gave me pause until I found out it's really a prequel to the other four - the book in which Bell proves his bones as a private investigator. 

Bell, who is relatively fresh out of an apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, is hired to find unionist saboteurs in the coal mines. In the process, he witnesses an accident that he believes wasn't an accident at all - and sets off to get to the truth. Doing so pits him against very ruthless and powerful people who, especially in the days of crooked politicians and coal industry magnates, will stop at nothing to keep the "working man" in his place and keep racking up enormous profits to fund their private yachts, elegant mansions, steamboats and special railroad cars.

I admit reading was a bit of a slogfest for me, but only because the dialogue is in keeping with the times (and yes, a bit of my aversion to history). But it was totally fascinating and expertly crafted; I'm sure a great deal of research went into the writing and many of the happenings are based - though perhaps loosely - on real events. There really was a Henry Clay Frick (a bad guy in this book has a similar name) who was a major American industrialist and financier during the coal-coke-steel industry's early years, for instance - at one time he was considered the most hated man in America.

It was also quite interesting to see names of places very familiar to me: Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, the Monongehela and Ohio rivers on which barges tote coal to big cities like Cincinnati (perhaps stopping for water in Steubenville, Ohio). 

Heck, I even got a chuckle or two, such as when a powerful judge pronounced, "Nothing becomes Pittsburgh like the leaving of it!"

All in all, it's an excellent read - and for those who love history and whodunits, it's ideal. I know I'll take a break by reading a couple of other books in present-day settings, but this one was interesting enough that I'm actually considering giving the rest of this series a try.

The Striker by Clive Cussler (Putnam Adult, March 2013); 384 pp.