Prizzis Honor

Richard Condon shows the mob as a family of degenerates, violent felons who are still human beings who also fall in love. The focus on the novel is how a hit man, looking to embellish his career, dates a big mob guy’s daughter, only to fall in love with another killer who is a woman. She has been hired to kill him but she also is in love with him. Published in 1982 , the novel captures the entanglements of a soap opera with real bite. The movie with Jack Nicholson is also top rate.

Charley is a member of the Prizzi crime family, an underboss and top hitter, whose just done the family a good turn by killing a traitor who stole three-quarters of a million dollars from the family. That's nothing new for Charley, just a day's work, but he discovers, first, that his new girlfriend was the dead man's wife, and second, that she's a contract killer for the mob and has just taken a contract out on him. 

Richard Condon is notable for his satire novels, particularly The Manchurian Candidate which Hollywood stripped of its humor, both political and crime,… show more.