| Binding: Hardcover |
| EAN: 9780060185077 |
| ISBN: 0060185074 |
| Label: HarperCollins |
| Manufacturer: HarperCollins |
| Number Of Items: 1 |
| Number Of Pages: 400 |
| Product Group: Book |
| Publication Date: 2001-03-01 |
| Publisher: HarperCollins |
| Sales Rank on Amazon: 644,547 |
| Studio: HarperCollins |
| UPC: |
Source:Product Description
In
The Vendetta Defense, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline delivers a wonderfully rich, vivid story of past sins, love, and justice.
Lawyer Judy Carrier takes the case of her career when an elderly pigeon racer named Anthony Lucia is arrested for the murder of his lifelong enemy, Angelo Coluzzi. "Pigeon Tony," as he's known to all his South Philly neighbors, confesses he killed Coluzzi because of a vendetta begun more than fifty years ago, a blood feud that has brought great tragedy to Pigeon Tony's life.
Her client's guilt, however, is only the beginning of Judy's problems. The Coluzzi family wants revenge, and they are determined to finish off Pigeon Tony and Judy before the case can go to trial. And if that isn't enough, Judy's got to contend with Tony's magnetic grandson, Frank, a man who makes her think about everything but the law, and her boss, the no-nonsense Bennie Rosato.
In a case steeped in blood and memory, it will take a stroke of brilliance to save Pigeon Tony. But if anyone just might see justice done, it's this gutsy young attorney who'll risk everything to win ... including her life.
Source:Amazon.com Review
You can't read past the first chapter of Lisa Scottoline's newest legal thriller without mentally casting the actor who might play Pigeon Tony, the charming and totally authentic defendant who's on trial for killing the man who raped and murdered his wife, destroyed his son and daughter-in-law in a staged "accident," and has threatened the life of his grandson. Robert De Niro's too threatening, Joe Mantegna's too young, Marlon Brando's too fat, but somewhere there must be a celluloid counterpart to one of the most delightful antiheroes in recent crime fiction. Meanwhile, this wonderful character study of a man of conscience on trial for a crime of passion will divert and entertain fans of Scottoline's previous novels about Bennie Rosato's high-estrogen Philadelphia law firm (
Moment of Truth,
Mistaken Identity).
When Judy Carrier, one of Bennie's attorneys, takes on Tony's defense, she's faced with a legal and moral dilemma. Tony admits that he killed Angelo Coluzzi, but insists it wasn't murder but vendetta, a justifiable payback for a blood crime committed nearly half a century ago and a continent away. The Coluzzi family knows about vendetta, too--they've got their own payback planned, and the trick for Judy is keeping Pigeon Tony (and herself) alive long enough to get them to trial. There's a complication de coeur when Judy falls in love with Tony's grandson, a hunky stonemason who will do for fences what Robert James Waller did for covered bridges (Clint Eastwood's too old, Brad Pitt's too young, etc.). But all's well that ends well in a tidy little read that will probably earn Scottoline another well-deserved shot at the bestseller list. --Jane Adams
Average Customer Review: 4.0
Total Customer Reviews: 67
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 2
Summary: I'ma wonder whata alla da fuss is abouta
This was my first Scottoline novel and it will certainly be my last. I don't entirely understand why someone with such modest writing skills has become so popular, and I definitely don't understand why the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League isn't picketing her publisher. In this novel, Scottoline takes evident pride in depicting the Italian-American community she grew up near (if not exactly in), employing a sort of "you can't be mad at me, I'm Italian" approach to trotting out stereotypes so broad that not even The Sopranos would have thought of using them. And let's be clear: I'm not arguing that they're "offensive"; I'm saying that they're overdone, repetitive, unoriginal, graceless, tedious, and ham-handed. In this book, one of Scottoline's two main characters is an elderly Italian immigrant who (despite being in American for some fifty years) still speaks the kind of broken English that you'd expect from a Chef Boyardee commercial. In print, Scottoline has chosen to represent that dialogue so absurdly and so unnaturally that at times you wonder whether she has a chronic tin ear or whether she thought she was writing ethnic satire. Clearly, her lawyer-protagonist (blonde and WASP) suffers from a kind of internal-dialogue Tourette's syndrome that causes her to think in ceaseless puns and seventh-grade double entendres, all of which are about as amusing as leprosy. Scottoline also likes to throw in Italian words and phrases--it adds so much color, dontcha know. Unfortunately, she gets about half of them wrong, writing "come se dice" instead of "come si dice," for example, or "io lo fatto" instead of "io l'ho fatto." They're stupid, embarrassing errors--for her, but also for her editor, who ought to have checked the Italian before letting Scottoline make a fool of herself. For someone who was a lawyer before she turned to potboiling, Scottoline also doesn't shy away from playing fast and loose with the law--in one scene, she has witnesses sitting in the courtroom audience, watching the trial before they are called to testify. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way--witnesses don't get to listen to the other witnesses. For all of that, the storyline is respectable enough - as "legal thrillers" go - but Scottoline seems to do everything she can think of to stand in its way. I find her voice so intrusive and so (for want of a better word) silly that I won't be coming back for more
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting Legal Dilemma
Lisa Scottoline's THE VENDETTA DEFENSE presents an interesting legal dilemma.
An old Italian man, "Pigeon Tony," who lived in prewar Italy under Mussolini and the Black Shirts and fled to America with his young son, is now accused of murdering another Italian-American, Angelo Coluzzi. Coluzzi is a rich man who is corrupt and has ties to the Mafia.
During flashbacks in the book, we see why their ages-old feud, since their lives in Italy when Coluzzi was one of the Black Shirts, led to the killing. And, according to Pigeon Tony, that's what it was--killing, not murder.
THE VENDETTA DEFENSE is one book in Scottoline's series about a Philadelphia law firm. One of the associate lawyers in the firm takes on this case, made more difficult by Pigeon Tony's ongoing insistence that he tell the judge that he did, in fact, kill Coluzzi. Pigeon Tony was sure the killing was justified because it wasn't murder; Coluzzi killed Pigeon Tony's wife in Italy many years ago and his son and daughter-in-law more recently in Philadelphia.
While this book wasn't a not-put-downable thriller, it was interesting and did make me want to keep reading. Scottoline seems to like to set herself up to solve unsolvable legal dilemmas.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 5
Summary: Finally! Someone who can do an Italian accent!!
Barbara Rosenblat does a SUPERB job with the reading of Lisa Scottoline's audiobook version of The Vendetta Defense. I usually cringe and am horrified by terrible accents, like Tony Shaloub's Italian mechanic on the TV Show, "Wings". (Shaloub is Lebanese, by the way....) Ms. Rosenblat was RIGHT ON and very funny as well. She had to have taken Italian lessons or lived there...
Fabulous Job from an Italian reviewer! I'll listen to her renditions again.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 4
Summary: laughed out loud
As an Italian American who grew up in a neighborhood in Philly, I thoroughly enjoyed the audio version of this book. Laughing out loud in the car. I know people like these characters. The reader did a superb job with the accents and of course Scottoline knows her material so well. It rang true - and funny.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 2
Summary: Just a little TOO unbelieveable
I'm normally kind with my reviews of this type of literature. It's not meant to be a novel of great significance - just lite entertainment.
BUT . . . this one has just a few too many holes.
It's not awful - I did finish it after all - but there were a number of negatives. Here are the pluses and minuses, as I see them:
*1* - I was not annoyed enough to turn off the tape and stop listening.
-2- - the cast of characters tended to be a little too annoying in their "goodness" vs. "evil." Pigeon Tony was a little "too" sweet for my taste. Even under the given circumstances, he needed a little more grit.
-3- - As mentioned by another reviewer, what was with the 1st degree murder charge? Can't imagine any prosecutor worth his salt pursuing anything over manslaughter, given the circumstances.
-4- - The romance angle was a little heavy-handed.
-5- - The total inaction of the authorities when Judy's life was threatened strains credibility.
Overall, I like Scottoline. I've read several of her other novels. This one, though, just left me feeling kind of "blah-humbug". Here's to a better story next time!
