April 1, 2023
Sal Cupertine wants quits with his life as a Mafia hitman, but trying to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen isn't working as planned. He's still being pursued by enemies within and without the law, including Peaches Pocotillo, the Indigenous head of a crime syndicate based in the U.S. West. Wrapping up the Hammett Prize--nominated "Gangsterland" trilogy. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from July 3, 2023
Goldberg concludes his Gangsterland trilogy in style, following up 2017’s Gangster Nation with a mesmerizing comic noir that’s fully accessible to series newcomers. After killing several FBI agents in 1998 Chicago, mobster Sal Cupertine hid in the back of a meat truck and reemerged in Las Vegas, where he assumed the identity of Rabbi David Cohen. In time, Sal grew into the role, providing genuine succor to his congregation and finding some satisfaction in doing so. But by 2002, the walls are closing in on him. Hospitalized after being assaulted—an attack that’s undone the plastic surgery he’s used to conceal his true identity—Sal is targeted by Matthew Drew, a former FBI agent who’s been framed for murders in Portland, Ore., and Peaches Pocotillo, a Native American gang lord who’s looking to take over Sal’s operations. Drawing his foes out to the desert, Sal prepares for a final showdown that will either end his life or free him for good. Goldberg keeps readers guessing whether Sal will again outsmart his foes and injects humor throughout (“The problem with being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, Matthew Drew realized, was the lack of dining options”) to keep the proceedings from growing too grim. This is a stellar end to one of the most inventive crime series in recent memory. Agent: Jennie Dunham, Dunham Literary.
August 1, 2023
In the third and final installment of Goldberg's sardonic series about a prolific Chicago hit man posing as a Las Vegas rabbi, the mobster's dual identity begins to fall apart. His surgically altered face pulverized by a sucker punch at a bar mitzvah, Sal Cupertine's disguise as Rabbi David Cohen is badly compromised. Bizarrely, he now resembles his former self, even under a beard. With FBI agents present and past gunning for him, along with old adversary Peaches Pocotillo, the new Native American head of the Chicago mob, he needs all the protection he can get. After Peaches burns down Sal's house in the Windy City and has ousted Family boss Ronnie Cupertine's wife and kids cut up and left in trash bags, Sal fears for the safety of his long unseen family, in protective custody somewhere. He once flirted with moral uplift after reading and quoting the Torah to become a passable rabbi: "The longer he pretended to be a rabbi, the better at being a rabbi he became." But that was four years ago. Now asked whether he has any problem with killing, he says, "None at all." While Goldberg continues to redefine hard-boiled with his streaming profanity and ripe intellectualism, he and his protagonist seem to lose interest in Sal/David's split personality. The murderous rabbi's inability to do wrong with his adoring flock in Vegas speaks to today's moral climate, but the comedic sparks that made Gangsterland (2014), the first novel in the series, so entertaining are in short supply. A sprawling effort with gratuitous elements including a cadaver farm of embalmed heads and other body parts, this book misses the concision of Goldberg's brilliant collection, The Low Desert (2021). An eventful but overstuffed finale.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 1, 2023
The third installment in the Gangsterland trilogy (Gangsterland, 2014; Gangster Nation, 2017) opens with a lengthy flashback to 1973, during Dark Billy Cupertine's final hours alive. Sal, Cupertine's son and the trilogy's central character, was a Chicago hitman forced to assume a new identity as a rabbi and relocate to Las Vegas. Set in 2002, the trilogy's final book finds Sal with a lot of problems. His identity is cracking. His enemies are getting closer. His family is hidden away in a witness protection program but nevertheless in danger. And Peaches Pocatillo, a Native American kingpin who has taken control of the Chicago mob, is hot on Sal's trail, determined to get revenge for a past slight. No spoilers here, but the opening flashback proves vitally important to the plot and to Sal. Perhaps the most well-written of the trilogy's installments, Gangster's Don't Die has a great story, exciting characters, and a few nifty surprises.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.