Thy Father's Son

The son of an Italian New York mafia don finds out he's Jewish in Leo Rutman's unusual novel of American organized crime and cultural identity. Set in 1962, Thy Father's Son is the story of Davey Rossi, a prizefighter and scion of an important syndicate family who finds out that he's actually the adopted, orphaned son of a murdered Jewish mobster and his showgirl moll. Furthermore, his adoptive father took part in the hit on his biological one. The stunned Rossi tries to track down his mother and find out the real story of the gangland machinations behind his father's death while becoming embroiled in vendettas of his own; along the way, Rutman reveals much about the heyday of Jewish organized crime, as well as the evolution of the Italian-American mafia in the 1960s. The book's first-person narration and dialogue can be stiff, but Rutman's original, intricate plot and well-researched historical details make up for the shortcomings of his prose.