Whacking Jimmy: A Novel

Amazon.com ReviewThe Mafia is not an equal-opportunity employer, a fact made emphatically clear to Annette Tucci, daughter of one mobster, daughter-in-law of another, and the worst mother since Medea. When Don Vittorio, head of the Detroit mob, anoints Annette's son Bobby as his reluctant heir, Annette hatches a plot to take the reins of the Family. It all hinges on the $40 million the old man has promised Bobby once he's made his bones by whacking Jimmy--Jimmy Hoffa, that is. Annette knows her soft-hearted kid is much more interested in his college classes, his girlfriend Tillie, and his burgeoning career as a rock musician than running the mob, so she stages a power play that pits the Don's first lieutenant and her own father (chief of the Chicago Family) against Bobby. William Wolf's debut mystery is a romp that will delight fans of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard, with plenty of local color and a cast of lively, picaresque minor characters (including Mendy Pearlstein, a Runyonesque mentor who steers Bobby through the shark-infested waters of organized crime; Tillie's mother, Ann, who's seduced by Mendy's charm and prefers him to her banker husband; and Rudy and Delbert, a couple of black street kids who take over the former clubhouse of the Purple Gang and turn it into a neighborhood youth club funded by grants from a Grosse Pointe foundation). Whacking Jimmy is a fast, funny novel that offers an intriguing, if implausible, solution to one of the biggest mysteries since Judge Crater disappeared. --Jane AdamsFrom Publishers WeeklyWhoever the pseudonymous Wolf may be, he knows how to add a fresh twist to familiar material. Although Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance has already been put through the fictional grinder by several authors, most recently Jon R. Jackson in his excellent Man with an Ax, Wolf gives his version of the story depth and originality by energizing characters who easily could have become cliches. Don Vittorio Tucci, the Detroit mob leader whose death kickstarts the plot, is an eminently nasty but utterly believable pragmatist. When his daughter-in-law suggests that his 21-year-old grandson Bobby should be his heir, Don Vittorio says, "Bobby's a sissy. He's got hair like a girl. He plays the guitar. Last Christmas he told me he wants to write novels, for Christ's sake. He wouldn't last ten minutes." But Bobby's mother, Annette (the daughter of a Chicago capo, and an astonishingly evil piece of work), persuades the dying man that under her tutelage the boy will do just fine. The fact that Bobby hates his mother and has no desire to enter the family business is also refreshing: there's no instant Michael Corleone-type transformation from upstanding citizen to hoodlum. Wolf has created a gallery of supporting players?a loyal, smart old Jewish sidekick; a pair of inspired black gangsters who keep a boxing kangaroo to soften up the opposition?who are original and often hilarious. As for Hoffa, his death happens far offstage and doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story. But Wolf does have a plausible theory about where his body is buried. 35,000 first printing. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.