Word: sicilianism
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...SICILIAN by Mario Puzo Simon & Schuster; 410 pages...
...Godfather was an irresistible tale of corruption and an equally tempting celebration of two sacred institutions, the family and free enterprise. The Sicilian, an offshoot of the 1969 bestseller, is also an offer of evil and romance that cannot be refused. Mario Puzo remains one of America's best popular storytellers, though his years of whittling movie scripts have resulted in chapters that seem spindly next to those in the full-bodied Godfather. In fact, the novel could be cut down and inserted in the earlier book. Offstage, at Mafia Central on Long Island, Don Corleone directs events that...
...time is 1950, and young Corleone is preparing to end the two-year exile imposed after he killed Sollozzo the Turk and the corrupt Police Captain McCluskey. Michael's final assignment is to arrange the escape of a Sicilian outlaw who has become an endangered folk hero. This proves difficult. The godfather-in-training is given the runaround and a chance to witness treacheries that seem to have originated in the Punic Wars...
...respects religion. But if he has a thought subtler than how to trap his enemies, he keeps it to himself. By contrast, Aspanu Pisciotta, the hero's friend and chief lieutenant, has a vivid psychology that eventually sustains Horace's 2,000-year-old observation that "Sicilian tyrants never invented a greater torment than envy...
...Government's deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1943, allowing the Mafiosi to regain their positions of power in return for help during the Allied invasion, sickens me. It is worse than the Mafia's barbaric custom of chopping up bodies...