Prizzi's Family

For anyone who has seen the film of Condon's Prizzi's Honor, it will be impossible to read this ""prequel'' set a decade earlier without visualizing Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston as Charley Partanna and Maerose Prizzi. Fortunately, that identification only enhances the pleasure of this entertaining depiction of high-level corruption. As in the first novel, Charley Partanna, trusted underboss and hitman for the Prizzi crime empire, has fallen for a woman who is not what she appears to be. In this case, it is Mardell La Tour, a showgirl in a Prizzi-owned nightclub. Mardell is, in fact, the daughter of a wealthy society family, and her showgirl act is only one of a series of identities she has adopted. Enter Maerose, the strong and beautiful granddaughter of Don Corrado Prizzi, who is ambitious to become the first woman boss of the Prizzis, a dream that requires Charley to marry her. Obsessed with Mardell yet pulled by loyalty and lust to Maerose, Charley is trapped between them, all the while carrying out his regular duties as the Prizzi enforcer. Condon serves up this zesty mix with good humor, broadside slams at politicians and evangelism, and generous helpings of Sicilian food.(October 1)