Bookgasm likes Johnny Porno

Bookgasm Reviews Johnny Porno

Stark House Press has branched out from reissues to put out a brand-new book by Charlie Stella. JOHNNY PORNO is a total throwback to the crime beat of the 1970s, using the idea of the mob’s involvement with the distribution of one of the most notorious porn movies ever made: DEEP THROAT. At the time, it was the center of a major court ruling and embraced as chic by Hollywood.

Stella explains in his introduction the impetus of the novel came to him after watching the documentary INSIDE DEEP THROAT, which delves into all the ins and outs of the film’s production and cultural influence. For his plot, he borrows the fact of how the mob took control of the film and its prints. The main character is John Albano, renamed by one of his contacts as Johnny Porno, since it’s his job to drive all around Long Island, picking up money and counting heads at the showings of the flick.

John knows full well this is a soul-sucking job, but he continues on, since his predecessor tried to cheat his bosses out of some money and wound up dead. John has a son he wants to see as much as possible, which is kind of hard since he owes money to his ex-wife, Nancy, and his hours are not what you would call stable.

Plenty of other characters play important roles in the various subplots. The best comparison that can be made is to the works of George V. Higgins. It helps that Stella seems to be a fan of THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, since both the film and book play into part of the story. Stella not only focuses on John’s life as a pick-up man for the mob, but also a group of detectives trying to bust anyone showing DEEP THROAT, and that 1970s staple of a detective on the take. Then there are the men in Nancy’s life. Her first husband comes back with a great scheme for some easy money, while her current man seems way too good for her.

Stella has fun with DEEP THROAT throughout the book, including the idea to sell fake autographed panties or pointing out that star Linda Lovelace was not what you would call a looker. The author also has a sort of off-the-page cameo from the director of the film, and even brings up the other big porno of the time, starring that Ivory Snow girl.

I’d rather not get any further into plot specifics, but the book is so well-crafted and well-paced that it’s going to make more than a few best-of lists when the time comes. Stella never goes for the cheap outs, letting these characters develop over the course of his story. Not only is it a throwback to the 1970s generation, but one that blows away most set in the present day. —Bruce Grossman (Bookgasm)

A Booklist Preview of a Review for the May 1st Issue and Somebody Dies likes JP, too!

Booklist Preview a Review to appear in the May 1st Review.

Don’t be fooled by the title - it’s just a gangster moniker. Elmore Leonard fans are going to love Stella’s entirely original contribution to the slice-of-criminal-life genre, down-and-dirty division. After the release of Deep Throat, the low-budget porn flick starring Linda Lovelace that captured the hearts and genitals of a nation, as well as making a substantial amount of cash, the Mob suddenly realizes that the legal situation in 1973 makes “fuck movies” viable and highly marketable to the masses. It’s no longer necessary to show them in rented warehouses. So enter entertainment purveyor and bagman John Albano, soon rechristened “Johnny Porno,” and a cast of gangsters all recruiting “talent” and following the money. This is the seventh novel from Stella (Mafiya, 2008), who has made the underside of the New York underworld his home. —Elliott Swanson (Booklist)

Somebody Dies says:

John Albano is behind on his child support. To that end, he needs to make quick money, and his car-driving job isn't cutting it. Luckily, he's come into a job running bootleg copies of the newly banned porn film Deep Throat (labeled as "Peter Rabit," misspelling and all) between Brooklyn and Long Island, collecting the receipts from the head-counters at the box office (five dollars for each patron), and giving the proceeds to the mob guys who "bought" the movie (actually, forced the film's writer/director Gerard Damiano out of their partnership).

For this, he is paid fifty dollars a day — and these are 1973 dollars. The guy who did it before him got the nickname Tommy Porno, but he was caught stealing and turned up dead with his hands cut off. So now they call Albano Johnny Porno, and he doesn't like it.

Meanwhile, John's ex-wife Nancy's first ex-husband Louis — whom she cheated on John with, and is cheating on her third husband with, too (are you keeping up?) — has hatched a plan to rob John of the mob's money when John comes to make his weekly child support payment to Nancy, with her help.

Louis owes four thousand dollars to his shylock and his bookie. He keeps looking for his next score but can't cut his nickel bags any more than he already does, or they'll start smelling like an Italian dinner. But Louis is a full-time con artist and philanderer loaded with ideas for whatever can make him an easy buck.

At the same time, Albano is also being pursued by police. Captain Billy Hastings, forced to retire when he took a swing at Albano and got knocked out for his trouble, is bent on revenge. And a duo is trying to clean the porn off the streets by investigating John's boss, Eddie Vento. Author Charlie Stella keeps all these subplots up in the air simultaneously without ever dropping a single ball.

Stella was raised in Brooklyn and spent 18 years making money wherever he could (legally or otherwise, much like his protagonist), so he knows the crowd he writes about. He wrote his first novel, Eddie's World, to impress his current wife, and he has steadily grown a following for his intelligent and astute books about criminals, receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

Inspired by a viewing of the documentary Inside Deep Throat — Stella and his wife looked at each other and said "Next book" — Johnny Porno, Stella's seventh novel, is a terrific crime epic from this woefully underknown author. It is loaded with a cast of quirky losers, layabouts, and louts, with the one shining star being John himself. It's the got the kind and number of characters that director Robert Altman liked to juggle, and I like to think it could have been his 1973 crime film if he hadn't decided to reimagine Philip Marlowe with The Long Goodbye.

Based on my experience with Johnny Porno — I haven't read his other books but plan to remedy that soon (Charlie Opera is $2.00 on Smashwords) — I must say that Charlie Stella is one of the best writers the crime genre currently has to offer. He's a natural wordsmith, putting down the way people really talk in a way that still reads smoothly — not an easy task. The fact that Stark House Press, who previously focused on reprinting "lost" pulp novels, chose Stella as their first original author — after author Ed Gorman recommended him upon reading the manuscript — says a lot about his peers' respect for him. —Craig Clarke (Somebody Dies)

Dirty Sexy Books on Johnny Porno ...

Johnny Porno
By Charlie Stella
April, 2010

Plot Summary: John Albano is feeling the heat from all sides during the summer of 1973 in New York City. Cut from his Union job for a scuffle with the foreman, John is now scrambling to pay rent, bills, and child support to his poison pill of an ex-wife. In a desperate move, he takes on a job shuttling film cans and moneybags for the local mafia boss. The ‘good guys’ are making a killing screening the illegal porno flick, Deep Throat, and John’s just trying to make a few bucks, but working for the mafia lands him in trouble up to his neck.

Charlie Stella has a gift for nailing the colorful characters in this seedy little corner of New York. The dialog couldn’t be more authentic, and from page one I was transported to a hot, gritty landscape full of guys who say ‘yous’ and women who are used to being used. I got the feeling that Mr. Stella really knows these people intimately, but part of me sincerely hopes that characters like Nancy, the ex-wife, are figments of his imagination. As much as I liked John, I absolutely hated her, and the depth of my emotion shows just how convincing the characterizations were.

I could easily see Johnny Porno being made into a film, and my husband would see it in a heartbeat. For myself, I prefer to consume crime stories in print, and this one turned into quite a page-turner at the end. Mr. Stella does not romanticize street life in any way, shape, or form, and I truly had no idea how he would end it. That makes for an exciting read, but it’s also unsettling, like riding on a rollercoaster at the crest and having no idea where it’ll hit bottom. I’m accustomed to hanging out with the romantics, not the realists, and while Mr. Stella doesn’t tie things up neat and pretty with a bow, the conclusion rang true and it satisfied me.

The story revolves around a wide cast of characters, and the only time I stumbled a bit was when it shifted over to the cops and feds trailing the mafia. Some of the police procedural had me scratching my head, but it didn’t matter because everything was crystal clear when the action snapped back to the criminal element. I relished how the focus was on the guys at the bottom of the totem pole, and I got to see what happens to the drivers, runners, and climbers who associate with organized crime. It ain’t pretty.

Rebecca Baumann (Dirty Sexy Books)

The New Mystery Reader on Johnny Porno

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella

Publisher: Stark House Press ISBN-10: 193358629X

Reviewed by Dana King, New Mystery Reader

Late summer of 1973 in New York. Watergate is attracting daily headlines and Vice President Spiro Agnew is near to resigning over corruption charges. The economy is in the dumper and the American League has adopted the Designated Hitter rule. In short, times stink. The movie Deep Throat has made Linda Lovelace a household name; when a New York judge rules the film to be obscene and bans it from theaters, the nation and media have something to discuss over dinner and bars, since nothing else important is going on.

This is the setting for Charlie Stella’s new novel, Johnny Porno. John Albano has lost his union carpenter’s card after an altercation at work, and is reduced to humping bootleg copies of Deep Throat around Brooklyn and Long Island for made man Eddie Vento. Albano has no long-term mob desires; he’s only trying to catch up on his child support, maybe take his kid to a Yankees game. Nothing too complicated there, right?

Enter John’s ex-wife, Nancy. She’s remarried to a member of the New York Philharmonic, but has never stopped sleeping with her pre-Albano husband, Louis Kirsk. Louis is a degenerate gambler who sleeps with anyone carrying complementary plumbing and will turn a nickel any way he can to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks and bookies. When Nancy tells him what John is doing for money, Louis develops a plan to rob him when he’s carrying the receipts of the underground showings back to Vento. Who better to rob than someone carrying illicit money? What Vento will do to John doesn’t enter into the equation.

That’s a movie’s worth of story already; Stella is still warming up. Nick Santorra is Vento’s driver, with an attitude about moving up and an abiding dislike of John. Bridget Malone is Vento’s mistress, and may have an arrangement with the FBI. Law enforcement is represented by NYPD Detectives Kaprowski, Levin, Brice, and Kelly, one of whom is in Vento’s pocket while the others try to bring him down.

Each of the stories is enough to carry a book of its own. Stella’s gift as a storyteller is to give thorough renderings of each without slighting any, and not making the book seem long. He build the stories independently, then pulls them together in increments so deftly the relationships may not dawn on the reader until sometime after they’ve become interdependent.

Stella is of the George V. Higgins school and tells the story through compelling dialogue; Tony Soprano may speak like a gangster, but Stella’s hoods speak as gangsters. Like Higgins, Stella isn’t afraid to let action occur offstage, to be described by the principals after the fact. In Stella’s hands, this adds to the suspense, as he understands every overt climax lessens tension at its conclusion, while covert climaxes continue to ratchet it up. No character is ever aware of as much as the reader, so actions that make perfect sense to them immediately set off alarms as the potential consequences become evident. Stella never succumbs to the temptation to have someone do anything out-of-character stupid for the sake of raising the stakes; his creations are more than capable of making logical decisions guaranteed to make things worse, and believably so.

It is Charlie Stella’s misfortune that gangster stories are popular for their romanticized portrayals. There’s nothing romantic or dashing in his world. Hoods are venal and petty, violent not solely as a business technique, but for convenience sake. The public would be better served if Stella’s depiction of organized crime was more generally accepted, as there would be no question of how vigorously to prosecute them. That’s not the world we live in, so take some solace in the entertainment provided by Stella’s non-fragrant universe, where the peripheral players most books and movies use as pawns have their own stories told without sentiment or window dressing. You’ll lose yourself in it, and remain grateful you only came for a visit.