Raskin's World by Charlie Stella

Charlie (seeing as how we've met, I think I'm allowed to use his first name) ventures away from his typical crime/mafia genre venturing in the legal world. No, it's not John Grisham redux. Lawyers are just the subjects of Charlie's pen (make that keyboard). "They" say write about what you know and Charlie has spent a long time in legal firms (but he's not a lawyer) so one could wonder how much of this book was inspired by actual shenanigans in some law firm from his past. But it's not a legal procedural. Regardless, as with most of Stella's books where character development reigns supreme, a cast of characters is warranted (essential?):

MAIN CAST

Carol Delvicchio: a stunningly beautiful young woman . . . has worked in the lower levels of a few law firms . . . always on the prowl for her next conquest she can squeeze for money and a living arrangement . . . has a history of drug/alcohol abuse to go with a few failed attempts at rehab.

Tom Raskin: . . . The title character . . . Married to Maryanne, couple kids . . . a decent man who strayed once (with Carol when she worked in his firm) and feels genuinely guilty . . . cut Carol off immediately after his failure, freeing her up to track down her next target.

Bobby Medina: Good husband and father . . . neighbor of Tom's . . . Raskin's best friend at the firm . . . 3 kids . . . both have similar sporting interests.

Maryanne Raskin: obviously married to Tom Raskin. Good friend to . . . 

Alicia Medina: She's unhappy in her marriage to Bobby . . . been stepping out, the latest is also a lawyer, of course . . . 3 young kids . . . When the wives and kids spend a few days in Atlantic City, she quietly has a rendezvous with her latest paramour . . . 

Nicholas Delvicchio: Carol's brother, also in the legal field (I think) . . . has bailed Carol out of various jams gone bad . . . paid for her rehab . . . loyal to a fault to his sister.

Marsha: engaged to Nicholas . . . hates Carol with a passion . . . thinks Carol is just using her brother as an always-there safety net . . . a bit of a shrew . . . comes from money and daughter of a retired, but still connected, judge.

SUPPORTING CAST

Jerry Sloane: a partner in a firm where Carol has cast her post-Tom snare . . . well heeled, married in the process of a potentially messy divorce . . . trying to figure out how to minimize the financial loss coming from the divorce

Dominic DiNucci: NY mobster . . . meets Carol on the Atlantic City boardwalk . . . talks her into quit chasing lawyers and join his cadre of dancers at his posh Manhattan club.  

Parents: Carlos and Maria (of Alicia); Jorge and Rose (of Bobby)

Paul: Alicia Medina's current fling

Hope I got that all correct - apologies to the Knuckmeister if I've screwed up. Should've taken notes while reading. Oh, well. 

 

Here we go. Carol and Raskin engage in some 'harmless' flirting at his firm. One night, he gets too drunk with Carol and, despite knowing better, still allowed a front seat hummer that has him immediately angry with himself. Tells Carol no way to anything in the future and struggles with telling Maryanne. Carol moves on to her next conquest (Jerry) and scores pretty big despite him being a pig. 

Meanwhile, Medina is getting concerned that his wife is having an affair (with Paul). When the truth comes out, Medina goes off the deep end where his actions have devastating consequences far beyond himself that will likely affect multiple generations within his circle. 

From a basic summary of the plot, that's it. There's some tangential mob involvement. Otherwise this is a tale of broken families and the depths people struggle with when infidelity rears its ugly head. No one is left unaffected or unbroken. It's Charlie's skill with the spoken word that draws us in. The dialogue, always the centerpiece of a Stella novel, is convincingly realistic drawing the reader into the fears, regrets, guilt, and sympathy for those victimized by Carol's selfish and childish behavior. 

We also are torn between the back and forth of friends and spouses, adult children and their parents, as we attempt to find a winner and a loser in this complex foray into human shortcomings. Don't look for a bang up solution (typical of a Stella mob story) because I'm betting he wants us to question all sides of this mess. In the end, there are solutions of course, but there are also some unresolved actions that'll stay with you well after you close the book. 

Bottom line boys and girls: This is one helluva a story . 

Charlie's departure from crime may leave some fans scratching their collective heads, but when it comes to delivering a tale that is rife with complex character development and lean righteous dialogue, I defy to you find a better active writer than Charlie Stella.

 

due to be published in early in 2026. Keep checking with Stark House Press or Amazon

 

  

Rapino/Amato by Charlie Stella

Charlie Stella has 10 crime novels, mostly based in various locales of the general NY city area, but elsewhere on occasion. For #11, he takes us eventually to the Rockies, mostly in and around Bozeman, MT. He’s taking bit of a risk by trading in the canyons of NYC for the mountains, but don’t let that bother you. Charlie is still Charlie - a superb storyteller, no matter where the story is based.

Charlie brings back this stone killer from Italy who featured prominently in his previous outing, Joey Piss Pot. In Joey, Charlie told his story with a bit of a wink given the frick and frack back and forth of the two main characters. Not this time. Stella's all business, keeping the yucks at a minimum. Giovanni Rapino, on the other hand, knows his place. He’s a hitman. Do the job, get out. If caught, clam up, do the time. At the end of Joey, Rapino was sent to Big Sandy, a KY prison of some note, to serve a seven-year sentence.

He's two years into his sentence when he is surprisingly transferred to a federal prison camp in SD. Compared to Big Sandy, this camp is a vacation. But only for a couple days when he is scheduled to meet with a Fed. No clue why until the Fed delivers the pitch: your history is perfect for our needs . . . work for us, go undercover, infiltrate a developing cartel operation in MT, gather intel, report back (frequently). Once the cartel finds out that MT isn’t good for business, the feds will set Rapino free and tear up his record. And if Rapino refuses? He gets a 1-way ticket back to Big Sandy. Rapino may not be totally sold, but it beats prison.

The cartels aren’t dumb. If he gets a foot in the door, the cartels will check him out. The Feds set him up with a new identity and a backstory dating back to Italy. Bye bye, Giovanni Rapino. Hello, Ruggiero (Reggie) Amato.

Amato heads off for Bozeman. At a Yankton, SD truck stop, he and a waitress, Brenda Lee of LA, find something in each other that clicks. She’s got no tie to Yankton and joins Amato on his way to Bozeman. They find a place to stay, she finds a waitressing job and Amato steps out to get the cartel’s attention. Which he does when he kills on the cartel’s advance men.

Stella takes us in and out of the lives of Brenda Lee and Reggie, the overbearing Feds, the various cartel scum, not to mention some rumblings back in NYC about the whereabouts of Gio/Reggie and the remnants of Joey Piss Pot that needed resolution, not to mention the fish out of water behavior of cartel, Feds, and mob personnel vs. the locals native to the outback of mostly rural Montana. Be prepared for a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes to go with the back-and-forth negotiations and threats that accompany this mix of cultures.

Strangers in a strange land, right? Plus, what’s a CI to do? Once he’s done the job for the Feds, that included elimination of any number of cartel members, he’s got to look out for himself and Brenda Lee. Always the chance the Feds may turn on him as a loose end that needs to go away.

Have no fear, children. Charlie won’t let you down. Count on him to take you on a complex and convoluted journey of promises, betrayals, and setups, of how a good guy (no matter what his history) and his girl juggle multiple players against each other as they claw their way out of all the messes presented. If Charlie wasn't an author extraordinaire, he'd be a master juggler able to keep all manner of weapons and chainsaws aloft.  In the meantime, this mismatched twosome manages to find copius opportunities to crawl all over each other in the sack, horndogs that they are. 

But look at it this way. Rapino/Amato can also be viewed as a criminal take on a romance novel (without the long haired buff blond guy riding a horse on the cover). Two broken people of disparate backgrounds, meet, fall in love, and overcome some unconscionable obstacles. 

Charlie, are you going soft on us?

Anyway, boys and girls, that is how you get and stay at the top of my power rotation of authors. Find any of his books. You'll learn quickly why I'm hooked.

 

ECD

Joey Piss Pot by Charlie Stella

#10 in Stella’s library of mob fiction (on top of two non-fiction and two plays). You got 10 published books in a common theme, you’re good. Trust us.

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

 

Tommy Red by Charlie Stella

The modern mob is a shell of its former existence. La Cosa Nostra is now La Cosa Freak Show. Used to be if a wiseguy got convicted, he did his time in silence. Now, they all want to cut a deal and stay out of prison. Dominick Farase has dirt on the Cirelli family and manages to work a deal to get into WitSec that places him on an island just off the coast of New Hampshire.

NYPD organized crime cop Quinlan King travels to New England with his artsy wife to scope out the place where she will do some residential art course, stumbles across Farase and snaps a few shots on his phone. First stop when he returns? Why, retired family capo Gasper Cirelli, of course. The word gets passed to the son, Frank  and the wheels are set in motion for a hit reaching out to James ‘Doc’ Adamo to get it done.

Red-haired ‘Mick’ Tommy Dalton chose his own path and knows what probably awaits him. He is not likely to die in bed of old age. He married a stripper, fathered 3 daughters, then was divorced by his wife when she finally realized that Tommy was a bit more than just a thief. Being of Irish descent, he was unable to become a made man within any NY crime family so he went freelance specializing in contract killing. Pretty good at it and well paid to boot.

But right now, Tommy has bigger problems on his hands. Seems his ex decided that his oldest daughter (Alysha, NYU Pre-Vet student) deserves to know just who her father really is by telling her that Tommy is a murderer. The ex is pissed off because her newest man, a lawyer with political aspirations, found out Tommy wasn’t on the up and up and dumped her because Tommy’s history would kill any chance at holding public office; the press finds out everything.

‘Doc’ Adamo and Tommy are longtime friends and Doc acts as the middle man between the Cirelli family and Tommy. The hit goes down. Piece of cake.

But La Cosa Freak Show these days is more about CYA than pure retribution so the Cirelli’s have the bright idea that all loose ends need to be tied up. Hits are ordered on Doc, Tommy, Detective King, and lord knows who else.

Not all goes as planned. Doc survives the attack and manages to take out one of the hitters. A guy was tasked with following and killing Tommy on the island; bad idea. The FBI gets involved (they don’t like protected witnesses getting whacked), lower level wiseguys hoping to move up don’t have quite the talent of the old days. And going after Alysha in order to leverage Tommy wasn’t a bright move.

Dalton is a character from a short story Stella wrote for one of the terrific series of ‘Noir’ books, this one was Baltimore Noir (where I first stumbled across Stella). I once read where Stella said Tommy was one of his favorite characters and really wanted to pen a book with Tommy as the central character.

Holy crap. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Why the hell isn’t Stella on every mystery lover’s must-read list. All those supermarket bestsellers are all about marketing, certainly not about story, characters, dialogue, tone, setting, and (fictional) reality. This taut, tightly presented story of misplaced loyalties and retribution is nicely tied up in a fast-paced tale that, once you get used to the rhythm of the dialogue, just begs you to turn the next page.

To me, the best crime and noir novels absolutely require dialogue that both leaps off the page and drills under your fingernails. Dashiell Hammett, George V. Higgins, George Pelacanos come to mind. Higgins was a Boston lawyer in the DA’s office so he saw the underbelly of crime up close. Pelacanos (one of the original writers for The Wire) writes about DC crime and gets his feel for the voice of the street by volunteering with the DC Metro Juvenile division counseling kids to get out of the life. Stella grew up in the neighborhood and knows of many of the people who are/were the source material for the movie Goodfellas. And his cover blurb says that was ‘a former window washer, word processor, and knockaround guy’ (apply your own definition). While the plotline may be a figment of Stella’s imagination, the interaction between and amongst the characters is the absolutely the real deal.

One hallmark of Stella’s books is a mostly innocent good guy caught in the middle who must find a way out. Tommy Red doesn’t really have that ‘good guy’ who now has to scramble. But true to form, Stella skillfully makes a contract killer into a sympathetic figure worthy of us pulling for. Let’s hope we haven’t heard the last of Tommy Dalton.  

Available from Stark House April, 2016.

Rough Riders by Charlie Stella

Full disclosure – Charlie Stella is at or near the top of my power rotation. Here we go.

Rough Riders is the follow-up to Stella’s first novel, Eddie’s World. At the end of that book, hustler James Singleton is trying some scam while turning state’s evidence, but ends up getting shot in the face, losing his eye and part of his cheek, and finally spirited off into witness protection.

Fast-forward about 10 years. Singleton wears half a facemask, is still working some scams, and lives a protected life in Minot, North Dakota under a new identity as Washington Stewart. Enter Colonel Robert Schmidt, MD and licensed helicopter pilot. A while back he stumbled onto a couple punks bringing in a load of heroin to the air force base and sees a big score if he can get help unloading it. It also looks like his wife cruises the Internet for sex and the Col. Dr. has simply decided he wants her dead. And our boy Singleton/Stewart has some answers and the contacts. But he also still harbors a bit of a grudge against Eddie Senta (namesake of Eddie’s World) for his disfigurement.

So let’s see if I can put all this together in less than 10,000 words. A college kid dies of an overdose. Singleton sends a couple guys back to NYC to kill Eddie and his wife, but the hit fails and both end up in the hospital. Eddie’s wife hires Alex Pavlik, one of the cops from Eddie’s World, to track down Singleton as she is sure he is behind the attempt, but Pavlik's girlfriend is worried about his safety. Singleton tries to get Senta again and the creeps he sends are no better the 2^nd time around. And the witness protection FBI handler is kind of dicey. Pavlik works his way to ND, meets up with a Lakota lawyer who helps out (and I hope Stella finds a way to bring the lawyer back in a future book), follows a couple clues to Minot. Singleton arranges for the Col. Dr.’s wife to meet a nasty end and this brings out the local cops, namely Det. Dale Hehn, a good guy investigator and former suitor of Miss North Dakota who now serves drinks at a hotel bar and who makes a play for Alex Pavlik causing his guilt meter to redline. And don't forget the FBI trying to get a couple Vegas accountants to roll on their mob boss so they use Singleton and promise him another new identity and address, I think.

And believe it or not, it all funnels down to Singleton. He tried to arrange a long distance hit – twice. Arranges for Col. Dr.’s wife to get dead. Works with the doc to help fly a copter and the drugs out of ND to Mexico. Had some connection to the drugs given to the college kid, jerks his handler around to hide his plans with the doc. Kills (or his girlfriend kills) a couple more locals. Runs over one cop. A junkie freezes and big bucks defense lawyer shows up way too frequently. And I’m sure I’ve left out maybe a dozen other critical characters and side plots and apologize to the author for messing up my summary. 

MRB fav Stella is a whole lot better at developing the plot than I. No way I could do this clever storyline any justice. His deft skill at juggling plots and characters is what makes Stella one terrific, if undiscovered and underappreciated, storyteller. Some authors make the scene come alive, Stella makes the characters so alive it’s like the reader is less an observer and more of a bit of a participant, or at the very least an eavesdropper. Take equal parts Bruen, Higgins, Pelecanos, and Leonard, stir in realistic, believable, characters that you can identify with, and even sympathize with (including some bad guys), season with local color from both NY and ND, and top off with sex, drugs, rock and roll and some cool cultural references for a rough ride through the wild winter of ND. Sort of like Goodfellas meets Fargo. Check out Eddie’s World and start right in on Rough Riders. You’ll love the ride.

Then read everything else he’s done.

East Coast Don

Shakedown by Charlie Stella

Bobby Genarro used to run a betting office for the local Mafiya family and it did pretty well. But he met a woman, Lin Yao and everything changed. He begged out of the life, wants to find a legit jog, marry Lin Yao, and make babies.

But the mob life has changed in recent years. Seems like every time a wiseguy gets picked up by the Feds, he rolls over on his old employers getting a new life somewhere well outside of NYC. The remaining wiseguys are left to clean up the messes and kill whomever they think could be the next to roll. The old loyalties have gone the way of the proverbial dodo bird. So when a guy either disappears or drops out, there must be a better reason than going legit and getting married. Bobby’s old bosses want to know if he is cooperating with the police. And they figure that Bobby made off with some of the profits from the old office and want some significant cash.

Tommy Agro, a wiseguy who can’t quite keep his analogies and metaphors straight, runs the local crew. He is training a new guy, a former U Michigan football player who bench presses 500 lbs named Forzino (he got hurt as a senior and missed out on a pro career) and is the nephew of some bigger boss; lotta muscle and potential, but short on experience. Joe Quack is Tommy’s boss, and apparently hung like a horse, which he uses to his advantage.

The NYPD organized crime unit is watching this part of the mob kind of implode on itself, but one of the 2 cops turns out to be dirty and working his own agenda. Forzino moved to NY with his fiance, Sally, who is kinda taken by the mob life and ends up bedding Joe Quack (and being sore for days afterward).

Bobby thinks he knows how to handle Agro and his crew so he can keep what money he has and avoid paying anybody anything, or at least get off on the cheap. But Agro sends in an Irish freelancer to convince Lin Yao to get Bobby to pay up. But things go south, Lin Yao gets snatched and her cousin, the head of a local Chinese street gang, decides to secure his family’s honor.

What started out as a simple shakedown escalates into nearly a full-blown war between the Italians, Chinese, and an Irish group trying to make some inroads. Bad guys are kidnapped by other bad guys, fingers are cut off, a hostage exchange is screwed up, the dirty cop surfaces, Forzino learns about his wife and Joe Quack (and does what a wiseguy in training should do); basically all hell breaks loose in this little corner of the Vignieris family.

As with his other books, this one follows a winning pattern: a good guy trying to do the right think, wiseguys out for themselves and their crew, a good cop and a bad cop. Never having been to NYC for more than a flight transfer, the descriptions of NYC made unknown locales pop in my mind’s eye. And don’t forget the dialogue that grabs you by the throat and drags you into Gennaro’s world. And as always, I fail miserably trying to describe Stella's intricate plotting.

But this is a sad day. I now have read through all Mr. Stella’s books and will have to patiently await what comes next from Stella’s fertile, if deliciously twisted, imagination.

BTW, thanks to the Knuckmeister hisself for arranging copies of earlier titles that seemed to be awfully hard to come by. With all the crap sitting on the shelves at B/N and Borders, you’d think quality storytelling would deserve some retail real estate. Sort of makes you go ‘hmmm.’ No wonder big box book stores are hurting; they wouldn’t know quality crime fiction if Forzino whacked mgmt across the face with any of Stella’s work.

East Coast Don

Mafiya by Charlie Stella

To say that Agnes Lynn has issues would be an understatement. Her childhood was a mess and she ends up in hooking in Vegas. When a john who was a particular problem for her ends up with a not so great finish, Agnes heads for NYC to try and carve out a new life that is out of that old life. She makes friends with Rachel Wilson who turns tricks as a means to an end . . . put money on the table to feed her kids after her loser husband bolted. Agnes is trying to get Rachel straight, but the money is too good. She has a gig with a fat, bald Arab with megabucks on his yacht.

Problem is, this scumbag has peculiar tastes in sex and friends. The friend who arranges this date is a slow-witted relative of a Russian crime boss looking to score his own deal. For this Arab, he ‘buys’ Rachel from her pimp, sets the two up, arranges for a couple of guys from the porn biz, a film crew, and some extremely sharp props. The sex and the snuff are filmed and Rachel’s mutilated remains wash up on the shore of some NY tributary.

But the head of the local branch of the Russian mob, Victor Timkin, does not welcome this little side venture. He is doing a favor for the Italian mob by rubbing out some of their competition. For his efforts, the Russians will get to take over a significant territory, and that is a whole lot more important than the video. So Victor decides to clean up the mess. This starts a string of killings of everyone involved in the video.

Meanwhile, Agnes is also on the hunt trying to find out what happened to Rachel and who is responsible. Her new boyfriend is Jack Russo, an ex-cop turned PI who brings some ex-wife baggage. He really wants to help, but Agnes is trying to keep him at a distance for his own safety. The police, with their own Russian ex-pat working organized crime (whose tactics make what we are lead to believe about Gitmo seem rather tame) are slowly putting together the pieces of this sordid affair, but remain behind Agnes to pick up the mess of bodies left by Timkin. The end explodes on the yacht ending with one cop seriously shot, supporting Russians meeting their end, the Arab probably headed back to his home country, and Agnes running off to parts unknown to escape the horror.

Regular readers of this (both out you!) know Mr. Stella is a friend of MRB. This book was also reviewed by West Coast Don a while back, but I thought I'd add my two cents. I think we have only one more title (Shakedown) to be fully up to date with his set of novels. I thought this one was as gritty or even grittier than some of this other books. The tale evolves over just a few days and runs at a very brisk pace. Prostitution, drugs, good/bad cops, organized crime, innocents-called-to-be-heros. On one level I had a bit of sympathy for Victor. He might be a ruthless criminal, but he’s caught in a problem not of his doing and tries to correct the problem the only way he knows how, by killing everyone involved.

While reading this, I was thinking this could be adapted as a two-part story arc over Law and Order: SVU (for the sex crime segment of the story) and Law and Order: Criminal Intent (for the organized crime component). Anyone know a Law and Order producer?

As usual, with Stella’s books, the dialogue, not the action, holds center stage and is what moves this cleverly plotted story along at light speed. The mystery-reading public doesn’t know what it’s missing. Kellerman? Woods? The Clarks? Patterson? Evanovich? Coulter? Really? Stick with Higgins, Leonard, Westlake, Lardner, Stella. Dorothy Parker once said she divides books into 2 classes: ‘good’ and ‘crap’ and this definitely belongs high up in the ‘good’ stack. So, choose from that pile because life’s too short to read crap.

East Coast Don

Jimmy Bench Press by Charlie Stella

Jimmy Mangine is just out from his second stint in prison and figures he is due to move up the crime ladder and become a made man in the Vignieris family. Jimmy isn't just muscle for some bottom feeder loan sharks, he is all muscle with a rep for having bench pressed over 400 lbs, a handy ability for someone whose life is tied up in intimidation and violence. You don't want him for a friend or an enemy.

Gangster wannabe #1, Jimmy Bench Press, gets hooked up with Gangster wanna be #2, Larry Berra, who needs help in collecting for an ill-advised loan to a old Cuban barber. Our barber had a thing going with a young bar owner half his age and took the loan out to help her out, but she just takes the cash and pushes poor Vittorio out and left to Jimmy BP's not-so-good nature.

But Jimmy is not working in a vacuum. Two decent cops, Pavlik and DeNafria, on the Organized Crime task force are working hard to get all the details needed to put him away even while each are dealing with their own demons of marital separation and a violent history.

Jimmy BP keeps sticking his fingers where they probably don't belong, giving our 2 good cops more than enough to keep track of to get him put back in prison. With the help of some dogged police work and the help of a jilted girlfriend, Pavlik and DeNafria follow Jimmy BP to a luxury yacht where he is set to become a made man.

This is the 2002 followup to very entertaining Eddie's World, but this one takes a bit of a different turn. In a number of Stella's books we find some decent guy caught on the edge of the mob. In Jimmy BP, the decent guys are the cops and the guy on the mob's list of up and comers, Jimmy, is a violent sociopath. Down in the gutter realism (or at least as much as a guy like me can envision such realism having never experienced it) carries the soul of this story. Some later efforts by Stella have a bit of a snarky grin, but this one spits in your eye, clutches your throat forcing you to struggle against the obsession of a man with but one goal, becoming a made man. Stella paints a very bad guy in such a light that the reader patiently waits for Jimmy BP to get what's coming to him, and when he does, while it's not quite what Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in Goodfellas) gets, I found it to be every bit as satisfying.

I've got two more Stella titles to go and I'll be up to date on his catalogue of novels (Mafiya, reviewed by West Coast Don, and Shakedown). Each one I've read so far has some seriously tough dialogue and characters that are interesting and both sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. If you can find it, be prepared for a few lost hours at the doorway to the alter according to Stella. And there are far worse places to wait for Tommy Burns.

East Coast Don

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella

It’s 1973 and it seems like everyone in NY wants a piece of Johnny Albano. His ex-wife Nancy is constantly busting his balls and her first ex-husband wants Nancy’s help in ripping Johnny off. A dirty cop who got caught on tape shaking down a bar was leveled by Albano really has a hard on for Albano’s neck. A mobster’s low rent driver keeps pushing until Johnny strikes back, repeatedly. Another dirty cop being scoped out by NYPD internal affairs wants to bring Johnny in to show his bosses he’s making some movement on a case. And that’s just the first couple chapters. Even the old Greek guy living in his building who is hot after Johnny’s mom lectures him every time he comes home. You half expect to hear Johnny cry out, “Take a number, New York!”

Johnny is basically a good guy who is down on his luck. He’s a carpenter who lost his union card when this idiot co-worker killed someone’s pet, laughed about it, and Johnny taught him a lesson. The bad news? The guy was connected; bye-bye union card. Now, Johnny drives for a car service to earn some money to stay current with his child support for Nancy and his son Jack (Nancy’s now married to husband #3, another decent guy who plays for the Philharmonic). Johnny also makes runs for this mob guy picking up the cash from illegal showings of the cultural sensation of the day, Deep Throat. As the courier, he inherits the moniker Johnny Porno from the previous courier (Tommy Porno) who ended up in a dumpster with his hands cut off as a message to future couriers thinking of skimming off the top. Anyway, on weekends, Johnny drives this brief circuit picking up cash and delivering to his mob connection. Times get tough and money is short and reluctantly agrees to a longer circuit and the bigger pickup and payment (and a deeper commitment to the mob life). And this is the cash that Louis, Nancy’s first ex-husband, wants her help in stealing. Don't forget the offer from some Lovelace admirer wanting to buy the Cadillac used in the movie.

After the theft, a number of side plots start to spiral toward the drain and eventually culminates in an almost Taxi Driver-like explosion. The body count mounts, mobster wanna-be’s rethink their career path, bad cops meet their appropriate ends, Johnny’s new girl friend goes MIA, and Nancy’s third ex-husband does a decent thing for Johnny.

This, the latest by Stella, is the fifth of his titles reviewed here (Charlie Opera, Cheapskates, Eddie’s World, Mafiya). The earlier books had, for me, a bit of a lighter feel as I found an undercurrent of humor and satire, especially in Charlie Opera and Cheapskates, woven within the innocent man vs. the mob story. I had been forewarned that Johnny Porno was a grittier story with more interconnected subplots than earlier titles and it was. Poor Johnny is caught in an ever tightening web of events that threaten his ability to support his child, find better and more honest work, and hook up with his new girlfriend. Once the theft takes place, the action accelerates as dozens of dominoes fall, some that favor Johnny, and some that don’t.

Having read 3 of the prior 4 Stella books posted here, I was excited to see this has all the trappings of classic Stella – decent guys, wise guys of various standing in the mob, good/dirty cops, but most importantly, dialogue that make you want to stand up and beg for more. While Stella points to George V. Higgins as inspiration, I see comparisons to a couple of my favorite contemporary authors who I think also excel at dialogue, George Pelacanos and Richard Price. Through Stella, you can practically smell the garlic on the breath of the wiseguys trying to intimidate, strain to hear cops jerking each other around through hot dog stuffed faces, wince at the lunacy of an ex-wife going off the deep end, and nod approvingly when someone does a decent thing for Johnny. Why Stella’s books aren’t flying off the main table at the front door of Barnes/Noble and Borders is, in itself, a crime.

East Coast Don

Mafiya by Charlie Stella

Now I see why East Coast Don was high on Charlie Stella, this being one he has not read yet, and the only one which has come to Amazon’s kindle. The action takes place in NYNY and involves a retired detective, Jack Russo, a former prostitute, Agnes, a bad cop, Michael Lyons, and the Russian Mafiya. There are subplots that help with character development, like Jack’s son who suffers a severely fractured leg when he runs into a car while trying to catch a football. Stella does a great job delivering a staccato style dialogue which carries the action effectively. The plot is fast and aggressive. There is a racially mixed group of characters. As I sometimes do, I’m including a one-liner from bad cop Lyons to heroic Russo, both white guys, in reference to intimate encounters with African-Americans: “I’ve tested the dark side myself. It isn’t all that bad, they trim the Brillo pad.” With murders happening everywhere, some of them being quite grizzly, it is, my professional opinion is that Charlie Stella is a sick man and that we are all the richer for his writing efforts. Thanks Charlie.

West Coast Don

Eddie's World by Charlie Stella

My next foray into the mind of Charlie Stella is Eddie’s World, his first novel dedicated to the college prof who introduced him George Higgins and Eddie Coyle.

Eddie Senta is a 40 something word processor who lives sort of on the edge of the mob underworld. His 2^nd wife, Diane, is in market research with a ticking biological clock, but Eddie doesn’t want to father another child as he isn’t all that proud of how he handled the one he has. Diane takes matters into her own hands and tries to get pregnant by her boss who has a PhD and runs marathons.

Eddie is a good guy. He has a lifelong friend, Tommy, who is in a bind and needs help. Eddie also helped a woman, Sarah, who was being attacked by a boss. He also was in the right (or wrong) place when he stops a mob hit. People owe Eddie favors.

Tommy needs money. Sarah knows her boss had money hidden away and tells Eddie to take it, as an act of revenge. So Eddie and Tommy plan to steal it and get Tommy out of hock. But Sarah has told a recent ex-con, James, about some gold also held by said boss and James then contacts some Russians about fencing the gold. The whole thing goes south when James decides he wants the money and the gold, kills Sarah, the boss, and a third guy. Eddie and Tommy try to steal the money but it’s gone, so they take what they can, a bunch of computers.

The word of the triple murder comes out and Tommy is sure the police will manage to tie he and Eddie to the murders. Poor Tommy tells the wrong wise guy that he thinks he and Eddie should turn themselves in before the police get too close.

The 2 detectives are playing dozens of scenarios in their heads, but getting closer each day. And James the ex-con is also closing in on Eddie. Everybody collides at Eddie’s home – Diane, his son, James, the Russian, NYPD, and the FBI (turns out James is in their back pocket).

The way I figure it, Eddie’s biggest problem is an serious case of the "loyalties". To Tommy, whom he has watched over since the two were young and Eddie was there when Tommy was told his dad had just died. To Sarah, whom he saved from a brutal sexual assault and has watched over her since. To Diane, despite her wishes to find someone to father a child. This is an interesting character study of a man on the fringes of the mob who clings to a code of morality, even if he is a bit of a gangster. For those of us who like crime stories, this is another winner from Mr. Stella. Out library doesn’t have any more titles by Stella and B/N has none on their shelves, so I guess I need to prowl the used book stores to find more.

East Coast Don

Cheapskates by Charlie Stella

Today’s foray into the mind of Charlie Stella is his 2005 release, Cheapskates. After his reply (2 times!) to this blog, I had to get another story to confirm that his mind really is as pleasantly twisted as I thought after reading Charlie Opera. Again, we need to meet the characters and maybe you’ll get the idea of the storyline from this description. Or maybe not, and if you don’t, it’s my fault, not Stella’s.

The good guys:

Peter Rizzo-being released from Fishkill Penitentiary after serving 2 years for assault. He broke the jaw of a guy his wife was seeing. Was this an act of jealousy or did his wife set him up? His lawyer said he could get Rizzo off, but Peter wants to do the right thing and serve his time. He says his ex-wife beat him out of $50K in the ensuing divorce and he wants it back, with interest (he’s not greedy. He’ll accept bank rate). While in jail, he meets . . .

Reese Waters-former NYC bus driver also doing about 2 years for car theft. When a friend pleads for Reese to drive a car somewhere, the car turns out to be stolen and the police are watching it, catching Reese in the act and was found guilty of trying to help out a friend steal cars (some friend). While in jail, Reese saves the local Nation of Islam big gun and in doing so, Peter gets his stomach sliced open. Reese and Peter become cellmates, friends, and the Nation of Islam owes Reese a big favor. Peter wants Reese to talk to his ex about the money.

Vincent Coleman-bus driver friend of Reese from back in the day.

The 2 get released and Peter ends up being killed by a professional hit man that very day. A low life guy tries to take out Reese by shooting through a door and misses because Reese bent over to pick up a St. Jude medal given to him by . . .

Laney, a friend of Reese’s mom sort of being set up to meet and get to know Reese.

But Reese and Peter just want to do what's right. With Peter dead and Peter’s family not wanting to pay for a burial or cremation (at least until Reese comes up with some $$ to release the body), Reese takes it on himself to get the money to get his friend buried from Peter's ex.

Belzinger, Greene and DeNafria-The first 2 are detectives tracking Reese trying to figure out just what in the world is going on. The latter is on the organized crime task force, currently on leave, but helping out his ex, Belzinger.

The bad guys:

Janice Barrett-Peter’s witch of an ex. She’s an exec of some sort, planned the confrontation that lead to Peter arrest knowing how he’d react, cheats him out of money, runs around with mob guys, tries to get Reese off his high horse about a burial. She is daughter and sister to . . .

Michael and Alex Barrett-in construction and in bed with the mob to occasionally launder money.

Jimmy Valentine, aka Jimmy Wigs-consigliere to the Vignieri family and soon to be hauled in by the organized crime taskforce. Janet’s current fling, possible financier to a new business, with a flair for wearing wigs. His dialogue read to me like he was always talking with his mouth full.

Johnny Mauro-low level hood, 2-time loser, carried out the failed hit on Reese.

Tommy Burns-a pro, carried out the successful hit on Peter with a penchant for distributing pre-paid cell phones and currently driving for some car service.

All Reese wants to do is the right thing and bury his friend. But he has no money, his mom dies a day or two after his release, Laney is trying to steer him away from all the potential problems, and Peter’s ex, Janice, wants nothing to do with Reese’s request. She had Peter killed, wants Reese to disappear, keep the money, and open her own agency. But to do all this, she needs Jimmy Wigs, and other assorted mob types, to shut this whole thing down. But Reese works out a plan (with an assist from the local Nation of Islam chapter), Jimmy Wigs works out a plan, muscle from the Nation has a plan, but just when the plans are about to collide, Janice goes ballistic and starts shooting, Coleman drives a bus over the Nation thug, Jimmy implicates Janice in Peter’s death, daddy Barrett and Mauro both end up dead, Reese ends up with the money keeping only what’s needed for the burial giving the rest to Laney to divvy up amongst some churches.

Got that? Two good guys caught up in things beyond their control. Another wonderfully twisted plot from Charlie Stella. And in the book, he manages a reference to one of his other books, Jimmy Bench-Press, which I HAVE to get now. Mr. Stella and graduated from an engaging diversion into a convoluted world of innocents and the mob and jumped right up into my power rotation that includes Robert McCammon, Brad Thor, Lee Child, Brian Haig, George Pelacanos, David Hagberg, and Ken Bruen. I wonder why such inventive plotting and interesting characters flies below the radar of current readers of modern crime?

And Tommy Burns was last seen driving south through Georgia, still hawking pre-paid cell phones.

East Coast Don