Unbelievable characters and implausible situations undermine Vincent’s second novel, set seven years after the events in his debut, Mafia Summer
(2005). Lt. Vinny Vesta—Hell’s Kitchen gang leader turned maverick fighter pilot—is enjoying the summer of 1957 stationed at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station pursuing the three Fs: fun, flying and fornication. But his hedonistic existence is temporarily sidetracked when a fellow aviator is killed while practicing formation aerobatics over the Atlantic. Ordered to shepherd the remains to the deceased pilot’s wife in California, Vesta is shocked when he encounters a redheaded femme fatale, Caitlin Pennington, who, instead of expressing grief for her recently deceased husband, invites Vesta into her bed. After a torrid affair, Vesta begins to feel the wrath of Pennington’s overly protective father—the powerful lawyer for a Los Angeles mob boss—who will do anything to keep his daughter’s budding Hollywood career on track. Featuring such real-life mob figures as Vito Genovese and Frank Costello in peripheral roles, Vincent’s newest isn’t so much a down-and-dirty gangland thriller as it is an unlikely love story with crime-fiction underpinnings. (Jan.)
