Tools
Son
of the Mob
by Gordon Korman
Let’s just say that you are Vince Luca, 17, Italian, and you have a girl
in your car, on the beach, in the moonlight. It’s beautiful clear night.
You know there is a blanket in the trunk of your car. It’s your big chance
with a girl. Major make-out possibilities. Then you open the trunk, and there
it is - wrapped around a dead body. Your Italian father, is of course, the mob
boss. Nice car (it IS a Porsche), dead body. Your girlfriend has trouble keeping
down the screams. All is not lost however, Vince meets Kendra, a really great
girl with only one drawback- HER father is the FBI agent in charge of getting
the goods on Vince’s father. This story pulls you back into some really
hilarious scenes (what, you don’t think the dead body in the trunk that
sends your girlfriend into screaming fits isn’t funny?) Try seeing Vince
when he realizes his older brother is using his web page as a bookie scheme.
Then switch to some serious scenes: ¬ Vince feels sorry for one of his father’s
underlings, and loans him money to keep the mob off his back.- switch to funny-
Vince’s mother constantly cooking for 15 who show up for breakfast, begging
people to eat- ok a little stereotyped, but that’s what you’ll find-
funny, serious, funny, with great dialog that will keep you into the novel rooting
for the mob. Or at least the Son of the Mob.
by Mary Jo Heller of Shoreline Schools
Son
of the Mob
by Gordan Korman
Vince Luca is just like any other high school guy. Mostly. Somehow he doubts
that when
his classmates open their car trunks to get a blanket out for their date to
sit on, THEY find
a beat-up guy trussed like a pork roast. This is what happens when your father
is in “the vend-
ing machine business”, i.e., he’s a mob boss. Vince wants nothing
to do with his father’s bus-
iness, unlike his older brother, who bagged school after 12th grade to go into
the family biz. But he
feels bad for the guy in the trunk, and in trying to help him, gets sucked into
Dad’s stuff. To make
things worse, just when Vince finds a girl he thinks is really great, it turns
out that her father is the FBI
agent who’s had Vince’s house bugged for years and is trying to
take his father down. Romeo and
Juliette had nothing to complain about. It’s a funny, light read, but
includes questions like “Who’s good,
who’s bad, what is betrayal, and does it matter whether the one betrayed
is bad or not?”
By Cindy Claypool of King County Library System
Last Updated: January 15, 2008
