Prizzi's money
By: Richard Condon.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
Subjects: Prizzi family (Fictitious characters) -- Fiction; Organized crime -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction
Description: Yes, the PRIZZIS ARE BACK! The nation's greatest service organization, the premier family of organized crime, returns in all its venality and violence. Only to be confronted this time by the even greater appetite of...a woman!.

When Julia Asbury's distinguished husband, "Advisor to Presidents," disappears off his boat - an apparent kidnapping - the world is stunned. Julia, however, is under the impression that she and he had planned the whole extravagant caper together in order to reap the rewards of $75 million in ransom money (nontaxable), not to mention the looting of the 134 Asbury companies of many more millions.

Too late, she discovers that her husband had double-crossed her, making the Prizzi crime family a partner in his scheme. Indeed, to her horror, she discovers that throughout most of his life, this seeming gentleman, Henry George Asbury, had merely been a cat's paw for the Prizzis.

As it happened, Julia was no innocent; her roots were in that heartless underworld of omerta, too. Wasn't her father, Alberto Gino Melvini a.k.a. The Plumber, longtime aide to successive vindicatori of the Prizzi crime family? Perhaps it's no surprise then that Julia manages to outsmart the Prizzis at their own game, leaving them helpless and shocked, and walking off to a new life with a billion and a quarter...of their money. Who couldn't love her?

Assisting or resisting at this party are many of the old favorites: Charley Partanna, lover of food, women, and the silencer; Don Corrado Prizzi, capo di tutti Capi; Maerose Prizzi, Charley's (very) longtime fiancee; Edward S. Price (ne Prizzi), all alive and kicking (unlike many of their enemies), plus many new memorables, like Julia's great good friend Pino Tasca, an enforcer with the most beautiful manufactured teeth in the Environment.

Altogether a vivid - and very contemporary - romp of a return for the family that's more fun than the Corleones and as wicked as the Borgias!