Prizzi's Honor (novel)

Last updated

Prizzi's Honor is a satirical crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1982. It is the first of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the protagonist is a top member of the family named Charlie Partanna. It was adapted into a successful film of the same name. Prizzi's Honor was followed in 1986 by Prizzi's Family , which is a prequel story. Chronologically, the events in Prizzi's Honor are followed by the story of Prizzi's Money , which was the fourth and final Prizzi novel published, and also Condon's last work.

Contents

Plot summary

The opening lines of the New York Times review summarize the complexities of the novel:

CHARLEY PARTANNA, underboss of the Prizzi crime family, has a problem. He's just bumped off a traitor in Vegas who'd fleeced the organization to the tune of $720,000 - and now he's discovered that his new girlfriend, Irene, was the dead man's wife. As if that weren't enough of a headache, Charley's also learned that she's been augmenting her income as a tax consultant by working as a freelance hitter, and that she's now been offered a contract by a family rival to do the number on him. What a business for a woman! Charley grouses. This is a serious thing. We were going to get married.You think she decided what business? asks his father, Angelo, consigliere to the Prizzis. She's an American! She had a chance to win even more money so she grabbed it! [1]

Complexity builds upon complexity, irony builds upon irony, murder follows murder, and tension mounts as the improbable story of the two married killers races to its climax.

Condon's style

Condon attacked his targets, usually gangsters, financiers, and politicians, wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the International Herald Tribune, the well-known playwright George Axelrod ( The Seven-Year Itch , Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter ), who had collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, wrote:

"The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similies, the lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in composing complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding cigars is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."

In Prizzi's Honor Condon's normal exuberance is somewhat muted because the entire book is narrated through the viewpoints of the semi-literate underworld characters who populate it. Nevertheless, on the first page of the book, we have Don Corrado Prizzi, the 84-year-old leader of the family, attending a wedding:

He was asleep, but even in repose his face was as subtly distorted and burnished as that of a giant crown of thorns starfish predator. Every few moments both small, sharp eyes, as merry as ice cubes, would open, make a reading, then close again.

Real-life names in the book

All of Condon's books have, to an unknown degree, the names of real people in them as characters, generally very minor or peripheral. The most common, which appears in most of his books, is some variation of Franklin M. Heller. The real-life Heller was a television director in New York City in the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, who initially lived on Long Island and then moved to a house on Rockrimmon Road in Stamford, Connecticut. [2] In this book Marxie Heller plays a somewhat more important role than usual, being the husband of Charley's future wife, Irene, before being shot to death by Charley in the garage of Irene's Los Angeles home.

Reception

The New York Times gave it a very favorable long review, comparing it to Condon's previously best-known book, The Manchurian Candidate :

Of course, Mr. Condon is an old pro at mixing satire and suspense. Twenty years ago, he began a novel with an outlandish comic premise: Since Joe McCarthy couldn't have done more for the Communists if he had been one himself, suppose he had been? His answer to that question, The Manchurian Candidate, the first of what has been a long string of best sellers for Mr. Condon, was one of the finest thrillers of recent times and perhaps the most darkly amusing look ever at the McCarthy era. Prizzi's Honor also involves a humorous variation on a real-life theme... Twenty years after The Manchurian Candidate, it's nice to know that Mr. Condon is still up to his sly tricks. In his case, at least, it's a pleasure that - as he tells us an old Sicilian proverb has it - The less things change, the more they remain the same. [3]

Kirkus Review, however, was far less charitable. After a long synopsis of the plot, it concluded:

Believable? Not really. Hilarious? Now and then in the opening chapter--with the portrait of likable/dumb/lethal Charley and his reactions to Irene's secret life (""What a business for a woman!""). But all too soon the lovers' matter-of-fact murdering becomes sick instead of offbeat, while Condon's cheerful non-stop vulgarity shifts from gritty to gross. And, though intermittently inspired in its low-life linguistics, this rather slow-paced, loose-plotted farce/melodrama succeeds neither as dog-eat-dog black comedy nor as Mafioso thriller/romance. [4]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Manchurian Candidate</i> (1962 film) 1962 American psychological political thriller film

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir psychological political thriller film directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay is by George Axelrod, based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, with co-stars Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.

<i>Prizzis Honor</i> 1985 film by John Huston

Prizzi's Honor is a 1985 American black comedy crime film directed by John Huston, starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner as two highly skilled mob assassins who, after falling in love, are hired to kill each other. The screenplay co-written by Richard Condon is based on his 1982 novel of the same name. The film's supporting cast includes Anjelica Huston, Robert Loggia, John Randolph, CCH Pounder, Lawrence Tierney, and William Hickey. Stanley Tucci appears in a minor role in his film debut. It was the last of John Huston's films to be released during his lifetime.

<i>Something Happened</i> 1974 novel by Joseph Heller

Something Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel. Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche. Although Something Happened failed to achieve the level of renown that Catch-22 did, it has since developed a cult following, with some considering it one of Heller's finest works.

Richard Thomas Condon was an American political novelist. Though his works were satire, they were generally transformed into thrillers or semi-thrillers in other media, such as cinema. All 26 books were written in distinctive Condon style, which combined a fast pace, outrage, and frequent humor while focusing almost obsessively on monetary greed and political corruption. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." Condon's books were occasionally bestsellers, and a number of his books were made into films; he is primarily remembered for his 1959 The Manchurian Candidate and, many years later, a series of four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.

<i>The Manchurian Candidate</i> (2004 film) 2004 psychological political thriller film by Jonathan Demme

The Manchurian Candidate is a 2004 American neo-noir psychological political thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme. The film, based on Richard Condon's 1959 novel of the same name and a reworking of the previous 1962 film, stars Denzel Washington as Bennett Marco, a tenacious, virtuous soldier; Liev Schreiber as Raymond Shaw, a U.S. Representative from New York, manipulated into becoming a vice-presidential candidate; Jon Voight as U.S. Senator Tom Jordan, a challenger for vice president; and Meryl Streep as Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, also a U.S. Senator and Raymond's manipulative, ruthless mother.

George Axelrod was an American screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director, best known for his play The Seven Year Itch (1952), which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe. Axelrod was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and also adapted Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

Roy Aubrey Kelvin Heath was a Guyanese writer who settled in the UK, where he lived for five decades, working as a schoolteacher as well as writing. His 1978 novel The Murderer won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He went on to become more noted for his "Georgetown Trilogy" of novels, consisting of From the Heat of the Day (1979), One Generation (1980), and Genetha (1981), which were also published in an omnibus volume as The Armstrong Trilogy, 1994. Heath said that his writing was "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana".

<i>The Manchurian Candidate</i> 1959 novel by Richard Condon

The Manchurian Candidate is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.

<i>The Oldest Confession</i> Novel by Richard Condon

The Oldest Confession is a 1958 novel, the first of twenty-five by the American political novelist and satirist Richard Condon. It was published by Appleton-Century-Crofts. The novel is a tragicomedy about the attempted theft of a masterpiece from a museum in Spain. It can be classified as a caper story or caper novel, a subset of crime novels. The book deals with issues of money, greed, ethics and morality. It was adapted into a film retitled The Happy Thieves.

<i>Mile High</i> (novel) Novel by Richard Condon

Mile High was the eighth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by Dial Press in 1969. Internationally famous at the time of its publication, primarily because of his 1959 Manchurian Candidate, Condon had begun to lose the respect of critics with the publication of his last few books and the one-time, so-called Condon Cult was mostly a thing of the past. Like his fifth book, An Infinity of Mirrors, Mile High is a consciously ambitious work, primarily concerned with the establishment of Prohibition in the United States, and Condon researched it thoroughly. The first two-thirds of the book, in fact, reads as much like a lively history of New York City gangsterism from the mid-18th century through 1930 as it does a novel.

<i>Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale</i> Novel by Richard Condon

Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale was Richard Condon's third novel and gave impetus to the growing, though relatively short-lived "Condon cult" of that era. Published in 1960, it is written with all the panache, stylistic tricks, and mannerisms that characterize Condon's works. It was not, however, one of his more typical political thrillers, such as its immediate predecessor, the far better-known The Manchurian Candidate. While Condon is remembered today for a number of more action-oriented books such as Candidate, Winter Kills, and the Prizzi series, Some Angry Angel is largely forgotten.

<i>An Infinity of Mirrors</i> Novel by Richard Condon

An Infinity of Mirrors was the fifth and most ambitious book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. First published by Random House in 1964, it is set in France and Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, as seen through the eyes of a beautiful, rich Parisian Jew and her beloved husband, an old-fashioned Prussian army general. What unfolds is an almost unrelievedly bleak depiction of the rise of the Nazis and the Third Reich.

<i>Any God Will Do</i> Novel by Richard Condon

Any God Will Do is the sixth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by Random House in 1966. After the almost unmitigated grimness of his previous book, An Infinity of Mirrors, it was a return to his more usual light-heartedness as displayed in works such A Talent for Loving. Although its theme is madness, unusually for Condon it has little of the almost gratuitous scenes of violence and sudden deaths that punctuate most of his books. The only notable instance is that of a haughty French sommelier who shoots himself at an aristocratic dinner party when he discovers that an American guest is indeed correct in asserting a great white Burgundy can accompany young spring lamb.

<i>The Ecstasy Business</i>

The Ecstasy Business was the seventh book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by The Dial Press in 1967. Told in the third person, it is the broadly comic story of Tynan Bryson, "the greatest film star of his generation", and his torturous relationship with the director Albert McCobb, a blatant caricature of Alfred Hitchcock, and with his tempestuous ex-wife, an Italian film star to whom he has been married three times.

<i>And Then We Moved to Rossenarra</i> 1973 memoir by Richard Condon

And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating is a memoir by American political novelist Richard Condon, published by Dial Press in 1973. A native of New York City whose early career had mostly been that of a press agent for various Hollywood studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life but then became both prolific and famous; today, he is most remembered for his 1959 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and for his four later novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.

<i>Three Times Lucky</i> 2013 novel by Sheila Turnage

Three Times Lucky is a 2013 New York Times Best Seller adolescent novel by author Sheila Turnage. Three Times Lucky was a Newbery Medal Honor Book in 2013.

Prizzi's Family is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1986. It is the second of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charley Partanna. It is a prequel to the very successful Prizzi's Honor of 1982, which was also adapted into an award-winning film.

Prizzi's Glory is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1988. It is the third of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charlie Partanna. The book's events begin in 1986 and continue through the Presidential election of 1992.

Prizzi's Money is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1994. It is the last of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. It was also the last of 28 books that Condon wrote over a 36-year career. In all four Prizzi novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charley Partanna. In this book, however, which takes place about six or seven years after the events of the first novel, Prizzi's Honor, and at least a decade before those of the third book, Prizzi's Glory, Charley's role is less important than in the three others; although he makes brief appearances in the first half of the book, it is not until the second half that he becomes one of the primary characters.

<i>Moonflower Murders</i> Novel by Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders is a 2020 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the second novel in the Susan Ryeland series. The story focuses on the disappearance of a hotel employee and uses a story within a story format.

References

This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "Prizzi's Honor", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.