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.
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.
