Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Thriller / suspense fiction

GANGSTERLAND

Tod Goldberg

Gangsterland is the wickedly dark and funny new novel by a writer at the height of his power – a morality tale set in a desert landscape as ruthless and barren as those who inhabit it.

Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, known for his ability to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first-ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin.

A few surgeries and some intensive training later, and Sal Cupertine is gone, disappeared into the identity of Rabbi David Cohen. Leading his growing congregation in Las Vegas, overseeing the population and the temple and the new cemetery, Rabbi Cohen feels his wicked past slipping away from him, surprising even himself as he spouts quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament. Yet, as it turns out, the Mafia isn't quite done with him yet. Soon the new cemetery is being used as both a money and body-laundering scheme for the Chicago family. And that rogue FBI agent on his trail, seeking vengeance for the murder of his three fellow agents, isn't going to let Sal fade so easily into the desert.

Tod Goldberg is the author of the crime-tinged novel Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat, and the popular Burn Notice series. His essay “When They Let Them Bleed” first published in Hobart was selected by Cheryl Strayed for inclusion in Best American Essays 2013. He is also the author of the story collections Simplify, a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, and Other Resort Cities. His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, twice receiving Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize as well as being named a Distinguished Story of the Year in the 2009 Best American Mystery Stories. His essays, journalism, and criticism appear regularly in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Las Vegas CityLife and have been featured in Salon, Wall Street Journal, E!, and Jewcy among many others.

Available products
Book Published 2014-09-09 by Counterpoint
Book Published 2014-09-09 by Counterpoint

Comments

Infinitely readable, infinitely funny, and infinitely better than anything else you'll read this year!

With his eye for human detail and trademark wit, as dry as a desert breeze, Tod Goldberg charts Sal Cupertine's unlikely transition from stone-cold mob hitman to Las Vegas rabbi. This tale of witness relocation-by-mob—part Elmore Leonard, part Theatre of the Absurd—is a compelling examination of salvation, which comes in various guises and moves in elusive ways. A wholly unique tale from a wholly unique voice.

Gangsterland is Tod Goldberg at the height of his hilarious and incisive and hell-bent powers as a writer of who we are and what we thought we wanted and how we tried to stay alive in America —if we were insanely funny and contemplative hit men. No one does Vegas, the desert, money, and mayhem like Goldberg. I stayed up six nights in a row reading, unable to put this book down because I couldn't wait to see how he'd play each card.

Tod Goldberg is a one-of-a-kind writer, and this is his best novel to date. Harrowing, funny, wise, and heretical, Gangsterland is everything a thriller should be.

A cleverly spun novel that forced me to abandon my wiseguy moratorium. Goldberg has an amusing flair for contemporary hard-boil, and he knows his crime and crime-fighting procedures.

As sharp as a straight razor. But a lot more fun. Count me a huge fan.

Gangsterland is rich with complex and meaty characters, but its greatest strength is that it never pulls a punch, never holds back, and never apologizes for life's absurdities. If this novel were a person, you could ask it for a bookie.

BULGARIA/Soft Press HUNGARY/Jaffa FRANCE/Sonatine-Super 8 and 10/18 GERMANY/Bertelsmann-Carl's Books ITALY/Sperling & Kupfer NETHERLANDS/Querido-Q UK/Titan

Just when you thought the mafia novel was dead, Tod Goldberg breathes new life into it. Gangsterland, the best mafia novel in years, is a dark, funny, and smart page-turning crime story. It's also a moving, thoughtful meditation on ethics, religion, family, and a culture that eats itself. I loved this book.

Gangsterland is under option with CBS Productions for a TV series (25.9.13).

Tod Goldberg’s comic crime novel opens with a Chicago gangster, Sal Cupertine, murdering several F.B.I. agents in a hotel room. He’s then shipped in a meat truck to Las Vegas, where he undergoes an arduous transformation into Rabbi David Cohen (“a new nose and chin,” new teeth, tattoos laser-removed and rigorous study of holy texts). The book alternates between the desert, where Cohen oversees a temple and its cemetery (which the mob uses for laundering cash and corpses), and Chicago, where the lone survivor of the hotel room blood bath is intent on learning the killer’s whereabouts. In his plotting, dialogue and empathy for the bad guys, Goldberg aspires to the heights of Elmore Leonard. For those who miss the master, “Gangsterland” is a high-grade substitute.