Praise for

The Godfather's Revenge

Dim the lights and cue the music. Can you hear the plaintive theme music of Nino Rota's "Speak Softly, Love," better known as the theme to The Godfather Michael Corleone, is back.

Or rather he's making a return engagement. For even though the cultural juggernaut of the "Godfather" novels and movies hasn't made an appearance in bookstores since 2004, its influence is seldom far away.

They've spawned a whole series of mob dramas, most notably "The Sopranos." Even the Irish mob is muscling in on the action with "Brotherhood" on Showtime and Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" in theaters.

But there's nothing like the original, and the question this time around is if author Mark Winegardner can pull it off again.

Winegardner, an English professor at Florida State University, was chosen by the estate of the late Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, to continue the literary saga begun more than three decades ago and, presumably, bring in a few more bucks.

Amid some skepticism from fans of the books and movies, Winegardner produced The Godfather Returns in 2004. He knocked it out of the park then and does so again with the follow-up, The Godfather's Revenge.

This is no easy task. Even Francis Ford Coppola, the co-creator of the "Godfather" film juggernaut, botched the job with the third in his series, released in 1990.

The action of The Godfather's Revenge is set in 1963 and 1964, well before the third movie but after the first two.

Michael Corleone still has plenty of headaches. The U.S. Attorney General, Daniel Brendan Shea, (a Bobby Kennedy type) is making a stand against the mob, putting Corleone in a bind with his fellow Mafia leaders, since Corleone helped steal the presidential election for Shea's brother.

Corleone's former top mob lieutenant, Nick Geraci, is on the run and plotting his own bloody revenge and takeover of the Corleone family.

And Corleone's personal life is in a shambles as well. The ghost of his brother Fredo, whom he whacked for a family betrayal, continues to haunt him. His children are estranged from him. And Tom Hagen, his sometime consigliere and adopted brother, is engulfed in a very public scandal involving his mistress.

In this Godfather novel and in the previous one, Winegardner is like an expert restorer of a painting by an Old Master. You may think you know the painting well and appreciate its subtleties. You may assume it holds no more surprises. Winegardner, though, through his fine style, craft and attention to character, sheds new light and adds greater depth to the familiar.

What's more, Winegardner is a master plotter. The novel zips along. Readers who aren't familiar with the Godfather saga can jump right in without missing a beat. Hard-core Godfather fans, though, will find great pleasure in Winegardner's subtle references and attention to minor details from the saga.

As he did in his first take on the Godfather saga, Winegardner continues to hit the right note, and when you close the book, you can still hear the faint melody of the movie's theme song playing in the background.
—Steve Warmbir
Chicago Sun-Times

Operatic...A top-notch addition to the saga. Winegardner's deft plot-spinning is rivaled only by his sure grasp of Goodfella mise-en-scène, the profanity-laced witticisms, the fashion fetishizing, the cool, long, dark '60s Chevy Biscaynes.... A worthy addition to the chronicle of la famigilia Corleone. Winegardner breathlessly re-animates these archetypes even more effectively than he did in 2004's The Godfather Returns.
—Kirkus, Starred Review

Everything it should be: nuanced, chilling, and threaded with intrigue . . . you probably won't be able to put this one down.
—Entertainment Weekly

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Praise for The Godfather Returns

Corleone Family Values
The Godfather Returns is not only a real book by a real writer. It's also a real pleasure, a fine, swirling epic—bitter, touching, funny and true. Like some Corleone button man, the novelist Mark Winegardner ended up as the gun for hire. His book, set between 1955 and 1962, picks up where Puzo's novel left off: Don Vito is dead and Michael has consolidated the family power by offing his rivals in an orgy of death.

Set mostly in Las Vegas, Winegardner's novel has a deft structure that intersects with the plot of the film The Godfather Part II without being redundant. For example, Winegardner posits that before Michael went to fight in World War II, he volunteered with the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps, which not only fills in a blank of Michael's biography but also kindles a happy, hopeful section in which the future murderer and kingpin cheerfully plants trees and teaches men to read. Sonny Corleone's daughter Francesca gets to college and momentarily considers changing her name to the whitebread "Fran Collins," And Fredo becomes the host of a TV program called "The Fred Corleone Show" for which Winegardner has constructed amusing transcripts.

In terms of raw material, protagonists don't come more tricked out with tragic flaws than Michael Corleone. Winegardner has not squandered his inheritance. I didn't realize how much I missed Michael until meeting up with him again here. His intelligence, his contradictory capacity for love and wrath, his subtle sense of humor, his jitters about hanging on to his wife and, most of all, his doomed, almost childlike quest for legitimacy, are such an obviously renewable resource of drama that it seems shocking there's not a Godfather Part XII. Maybe Michael Corleone could have been the gangster Harry Potter.

Winegardner's shrewd debunking of Michael's dream of becoming "any all American executive" offers not just a perceptive analysis of one man's character, but also an elegant, ironic insight into the hypocrisy of American corporate life. The author harks back to Puzo's original epigraph, from Balzac, that "behind every fortune lies a crime." Michael wants the Corleone name to come to signify wealth and philanthropy like that of the Rockefellers—a family that got rich squeezing out its oil industry competitors and stayed rich by letting its striking workers get shot. "Michael wanted to transform an organization made up of violent peasant-criminals into a corporation that could take its place in the greatest legal gambling scam ever invented—the New York Stock Exchange," Winegardner writes.

The author's cultural literacy brightens up the Corleone underworld. These murders and betrayals are committed within the context of the cold war and the thinly veiled Camelot, a certain brash yet tender saloon singer (once again disguised as "Johnny Fontane") and the great put-down "beatnik."

Winegardner's most enjoyable subplot has to do with Michael's wife, Kay, and his adopted brother Tom Hagen's wife, Theresa; they are gaga devotees of Mark Rothko and other experimental modernist painters. This is a streamlined way for the author to give these Mafia wives compelling inner lives and earn their husbands' awe. On a plane above Nevada, "Kay marveled about the startling beauty of the desert, comparing it to the work of abstract painters Michael knew he should know." At one point, Andy Warhol himself shows up for an opening at the Las Vegas museum where Theresa's on the board. When she tells Tom and Michael that Warhol announced "that in the future, America will be Las Vegas. Not be like Vegas. Be Vegas," Michael answers, "Some people catch on quick." Moments like that, besides being flat-out entertaining, are also, thematically, fairly profound. As Theresa debates where to hang her new Jackson Pollock, the reader would do well to remember that one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art was Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, daughter-in-law of the diabolical oilman John D. If the Rockefellers can use blood money to pay for Pollocks, why not the Corleones?

Even Michael Corleone's office furniture is a sham. In a neat trick of set design, Winegardner has Michael administer his criminal empire from a Danish modern desk. Blond wood! He sits there controlling the narcotics trade, collaborating with the Batista regime, outsmarting his enemies and ordering his brother whacked. That desk is a veneer. Pry underneath and you'll still find the darkness of his father's brooding Old World mahogany.
—Sarah Vowell, New York Times Book Review

An Offer You Can't Refuse
Every bit-part has a past and Winegardner has the poetic licence—and confidence—to elaborate. He even steps back in time to Michael’s childhood to witness the boy—opposed to all his father stood for—who shaped the man. Writing within stiff parameters and finding a style that neither mimics Puzo’s nor jars with it, Winegardner’s achievement is no mean feat.
—Andrea Henry, Daily Mirror

Written with great respect, imagination and humor
He artfully embellishes the character of singer Johnny Fontane—even more Sinatra-esque in this book than in the original. He also captures Johnny's patron, National label owner Phil Ornstein, with great deftness:

"Phil ran his hands through the hair he mostly didn't have. He was the sort of man who unconsciously took on other people's mannerisms."

Author makes family reunion very interesting
Cleverly, imaginatively, Winegardner follows up on the events of the novel while skirting the story line of the later films. The Godfather Returns, set in the years 1955 through 1962, is truly a sequel to the novel. It is well-written, expertly plotted and very engrossing.
—David Walton, The Plain Dealer

An ambitious story, panoramic and cinematic
In The Godfather Returns he has written a sequel that kisses the ring of the original while staying true to his own literary vision. . . . Winegardner has matched risk with risk and told an ambitious story, panoramic and cinematic, that smiles wryly when others might pour on the red sauce and wash mobster clichés in sepia tones. Winegardner breathes new life into The Godfather, even as it subverts its mythology. Instead of being handcuffed by the limitations inherent in such a project, he has made the story his own, much the same way Coppola did.
—Martin Schmutterer, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Winegardner deserves an A for effort, and more, here. The focus is on Don Michael Corleone—how could it be otherwise?—as he attempts to cement his power in order to ostensibly convert all of his businesses to legitimate enterprises.
—Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter.com

Michael Corleone Lives
Winegardner crafts a fascinating story about how Michael's Machiavellian maneuverings fall just short, thanks in part to a brilliant antagonist springing from Winegardner's imagination rather than Puzo's. Nick Geraci, one of the most interesting, multi-dimensional characters in recent fictional memory, begins as a simple soldier in the Corleone family and gradually works his way up to "caporegime" status. His ambitions cause him to form private alliances with other Mafiosi who are angling to replace Michael Corleone as the ultimate crime kingpin. . . . Most Puzo fans would have gladly settled for more of exactly the same, and Winegardner instead is giving them something that, in critical ways (more character development and depth, more subtle storytelling) exceeds the original. Essentially, The Godfather Returns didn't have to be this good—but it is.
—Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth/Dallas Star-Telegram

An earnest homage to the orginal
Winegardner gives a prominent role to Sonny's daughter, Francesca, who goes to college, marries a creepy ladies' man, and gets in touch with her violent inner Corleone. . . . And Winegardner writes like he's channeling Puzo.
—Entertainment Weekly

The Godfather resurrected
Winegardner's high-octane The Godfather Returns moves as fast as a drive-by shooting with tommy guns. It's full of violence, sex, insider knowledge about Fredo Corleone's double life—and more sex.
—Mark Hinson, Tallahassee Democrat

Guess what? Winegardner writes well
The high-octane kick will come from the roman-a-clef goodies. Now that Frank Sinatra is dead and Random House is beyond the reach of libel lawyers, Puzo's Johnny Fontane can stop hinting at Sinatra and can instead become Winegardner's Sinatra (complete with entourage of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and women by the dozen). Now that J. Edgar Hoover is dead, Winegardner can dredge up those ugly sex-life rumors and attach them to his fictional FBI chief. Now that that the Kennedy legend has dimmed, Winegardner feels free to present the family in the thinnest of disguises. Jack and Bobby Kennedy are presented as the Shea family—and they use Mafia money and muscle to win the White House for Jimmy Shea in 1960. . . .

. . . guess what? Winegardner writes well. A sample, a throwaway line from a scene in which Michael plays a solo game of pool:

In a spectacular combination shot, Michael Corleone sank the four in the side pocket. The six rolled after the five like a man trying to apologize to an angry lover, and they disappeared into the corner pocket together.

An Offer You Shouldn't Refuse
The competition to continue the Godfather saga was won by Ohio author Mark Winegardner, whose own novels (The Veracruz Blues, 1996; Crooked River Burning, 2001) display a gift for propulsive narration and a grasp of the social, religious, and political forces that affect individuals' destinies and traits—and, indeed, that are reminiscent of Puzo. Winegardner does many things very well. He has concocted a white-hot melodrama (whose details are too good to give away) that picks up where The Godfather left off, tracing the efforts of patriarch Vito Corleone's third son Michael ("the youngest don in America") to move his family to Nevada and the Corleone criminal empire into legitimately diversified business activities. Winegardner deftly connects these matters (occurring in the years 1955–62) with earlier episodes involving familiar characters now dead and alive . . . . Best of all, Winegardner honors The Godfather's genuinely tragic arc: the downward path trod by a sensitive, gifted man overwhelmed by forces he's conditioned to "respect" and nurture, even when the furies—in the form of Michael's nemesis, a serpent nurtured in the Corleones' bosom whose given name happens to be Fausto—begin to gather and descend. Mario Puzo would have liked this knowing homage to his best-known book. So will many, many readers.
—Bruce Allen, Kirkus Reviews

The Godfather Returns a worthy ‘interquel’
Mark Winegardner, the respected Florida literary novelist hand-picked by Random House to write a sequel to Mario Puzo's 1969 classic The Godfather, has come through handsomely. The Godfather Returns ($26.95) starts, naturally, with a mob hit that nails the reader to the chair.

The sparkling novel is neither sequel nor prequel but what might be called an "interquel," for it fills some of the chronological gaps between The Godfather (which takes place from 1945 to 1954), and Francis Ford Coppola's movies "The Godfather II" (1958-1959) and "The Godfather III" (1979-1980). There's an unfilled hole between the years 1962 and 1979, suggesting another "interquel."

At the beginning of The Godfather Returns, Michael Corleone aims to take the Corleones into legitimate pursuits, but up against him is the deadly Corleone enforcer Nick Geraci. Winegardner, a more skillful stylist than Puzo, richly builds upon the original characters, especially consigliere Tom Hagen and Michael's brother Fredo.
—Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

Leave the Cannoli, Take the Book
Acclaimed novelist Winegardner (Crooked River Burning)—whose proposal for this sequel to Mario Puzo’s 1969 classic, The Godfather, was selected after an international search by the publisher—carries off the assignment con brio. Taking place between 1955 and 1962, between the end of Puzo’s novel and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s two sequels, The Godfather Returns describes the early years of Michael Corleone’s reign, when he must dispose of a traitor within his own organization and consolidate his power among the various New York mob families. Winegardner reprises all the familiar characters, including consigliere Tom Hagen and Michael’s caporegimes, Pete Clemenza and Rocco Lampone. He also introduces Nick Geraci, who turns out to be one of Michael’s most formidable opponents. As a result, Michael discovers that it’s going to harder than he had anticipated to fulfill his pledge to his wife Kay that he would take the Corleone family out of the crime business and into legitimate enterprises. Just as in the original, the pages fly by, characters are dispatched in various violent ways, and a rough sort of justice (like it or not) prevails.
—Nancy Pearl, Library Journal

Winegardner brings enormous talent to bear on this popular story and its immense cast of characters, deepening Puzo’s work at nearly every step. A wholly absorbing novel that’s written beautifully, with great skill and passion. Godfather fans will love this tale; Puzo himself must be raising a celestial glass and shouting a hearty “Salut!” Let it be known that Winegardner, for his respect to the novel’s antecedents and for his accomplishment, shall henceforth be known as a Man of Honor.
—Publishers Weekly

I find myself more and more attracted to the strong new voice, the new faces, and the new dangers. It’s thrilling to watch Winegardner perform an impressive balancing act—he’s daring enough to take a classic novel in a new direction, and yet nimble enough not to trample Puzo’s work. Winegardner is simply adding new roses to Puzo’s bouquet, gently moving old ones aside, and what a vivid, vibrant bouquet it is.
—Fernando Ortiz, Corpus Christi Caller-Times

A mighty wow of a read. I couldn’t put it down and spent two feverish days and nights putting off everything else to finish the saga of the Corleones. The read of the fall.
—Liz Smith, New York Post