Chris Gallo grew up with some issues. When he was 12, his dad was ‘collateral damage’ in a mob hit in a Brooklyn bar owned by his grandfather Joseph. His mom has held Joseph responsible for well over a decade. After college, Chris bolted for the military. His mom didn’t find out until months into his tour in Afghanistan. When he came back, he opted for the FBI and steered his training to land him an undercover assignment in NYC checking into various mob factions with an intent on finding who ordered the hit that took out his father.
Joseph is retired now and spends most of his days with his life-long friend Artie Adler, a retired NYC detective. Joseph is worried about Chris as much as Chris’ mom. While he knows Chris is in NYC, he doesn’t know what he’s doing so he enlists Artie to resurrect age-old surveillance skills. What Artie finds doesn’t sit well with Joseph.
Now it gets complicated:
1. Carmine Montalvo is a mob kingpin serving long federal time . . . has cancer and will die in prison . . . wife Doris sleeps around cuz she likes it . . . beds a 20-something Eddie Russo, a civilian . . . beds Jerry Galante, Montalvo’s underboss . . . beds Giovanni Rapino, a recent import from Italy, is a stone killer whose mother was raped and murdered in the old country years ago.
2. Carmine tells Jerry to off Russo but Jerry thinks that’s a little stiff for a civilian and instead has some muscle put him in the hospital. Carmine learns of this and orders his lawyer, Morris Greenblatt, to have Rapino do what Galante didn’t have the stones to do. Rapino grabs a go-fer (Chris) to drive him to Russo’s house where he kills not only Russo but also his mom (Chris only drove. Didn’t know what Rapino did). No one - the cops, the feds, the other crime families - like it that Rapino took out civilians.
3. In Rapino’s apartment building live two young Asian girls. Of course, Rapino is sleeping with each. A couple Asian gang members want the girls in their harem, but Rapino talks (wink, wink) them out of it. The girls ‘borrow’ money from Rapino to finance their way to Europe.
4. Fontana is another underboss. Two (un-made) sons and a daughter. She’s pretty good at surveillance and a camera, the sons are inline to move up to run a crew but are also in at least one set of crosshairs.
5. Then there’s a dirty internal affairs cop messing things up on both sides.
Like all of Stella’s books, the stories are about relationships on both sides of the law. Primarily, it’s the lifelong relationship between Joseph and Artie (the title could be revised to 'Joey Piss Pot: A Love Story'). They bust other’s shoes (balls) constantly about almost everything in their lives. And each would go the extra mile, no matter the potential danger, for the other. Then there is the relationship between Joseph, his daughter-in-law, and her son Chris. Fontana and his three kids. Doris and her dalliances.
It's mob fiction so there will be blood, but those settings are expected. The draw with Stella’s books is character development, not page after page describing a surveillance route with 12 tails in the rearview mirror. It’s the verbal back and forth that plants you in your chair. Clever, brutal, lean, creative, profane, authentic, hard. Makes you think you’re eavesdropping on a reality that only Stella knows and lays out for the reader that makes you wonder . . .
“Where has this guy been?”
Remember Bum Phillips, the long-ago head football coach of the Houston Oilers? When asked whether his running back, Earl Campbell was in a class by himself, Phillips replied, ‘I don't know, but it sure doesn’t take long for the roll call.”
In that class of riveting writers that put you right adjacent to the characters, made sure you add Stella alongside of the likes of George V. Higgins, Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy, George Pelaconos and newcomers to school SA Cosby and Brian Panowich.
Them’s some good reading.
Published by Stark Press so you may need to do a little digging. Stark says it'll be released in July 2024.
P.S. many of Stella's earlier books have similar titles. You'll have to read the book to find out what it means.
East Coast Don
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