Hell's Kitchen in the summer of 1950 offers a ripe setting for a rousing crime novel, but Vincent's debut is stilted and amateurish compared to category classics. Against the backdrop of a mob war between real-life gangsters Frank Costello and his challenger, Vito Genovese, we meet 18-year-old protagonist Vinny Vesta, leader of the Icemen, a street-gang of "five Sicilians, one black, and an Irishman." With the blessing of Vinny's father, Gino, a caporegime
in the Mangano family, the boys embark on a string of minor capers. Soon, they're double-crossed by troublemaker Gee-gee Petrone, and fatalities result when the Icemen attempt to turn the tables. (Vinny's steamy affair with a gorgeous 29-year-old hatcheck girl ends abruptly when she winds up dead in a Dumpster.) To flesh out Vinny's sensitive, intellectual side, Vincent also hangs the story on the narrator's friendship with his Jewish neighbor Sidney Butcher, a sickly bookworm who improbably tutors Vinny in art and literature and even takes him to synagogue. Though TV writer and producer Vincent has researched his crime history, the novel's awkwardly shifting point of view, anachronisms and cartoonish violence make for a frustrating read. Agent, Ed Victor. (June)
