The Death of Frank Sinatra: A Novel - Hardcover

Ventura, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805037381 ISBN 13: 9780805037388

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

Synopsis

Both loving and hating Las Vegas, the city he knows all too well, private detective Mike Rose is forced to confront his family's past when his schizophrenic brother, Alvi, says the wrong thing at the wrong time.

About this title

Review:

It's 1993 in Las Vegas. They're about to blow up the historic Dunes Hotel to make room for some new architectural marvel; Frank Sinatra is making his last appearance at the Desert Inn; and private eye Mike Rose is trying to keep himself and his delusional brother Alvi alive. In this tremendous new mystery from veteran L.A. Weekly columnist Ventura, the emotional geography of Vegas comes to life as never before. Rose's parents were connected to some of the the city's darkest hours. Now, to pay off old debts and protect fragile friends, he has to shed some blood and look under some nasty rocks. Sinatra, of course, doesn't die -- but lots of other people do.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Ventura's typically overwrought prose (The Zoo Where You're Fed to God, 1994, etc.) here competes with the recent spate of films about the same subject--that modern-day Babylon in the desert, Las Vegas. As usual, Ventura overlays lots of gonzo theology and cool-guy posturing on a plot that doesn't live up to its noir pretenses. Mike Rose--short for Rossellini--is a true child of Vegas, the son of a showgirl and a gangster. A private investigator in his 40s, Rose knows where the bodies are buried. After all, his pop (``Eddie Maybe'') was a hit-man who went bonkers after participating in the biggest hit of his career--the cleanup to the Kennedy assassination, a job that led to his own disappearance. Rose can keep a secret, even though his mentally disturbed brother, Alvi, can't--he blames their strange family history, including some old porno made by his mother, for his own odd behavior. It's Alvi's loose talk, overheard on one of his brief stays at home from the loony bin, that leads to Rose's current mess. It turns out that the family's best friend, another gangster named Zig, saw to Eddie Maybe's demise, an act for which he hopes to atone by arranging his own death at Rose's hand. The current mob boss, Gino Lampedusa, wants Rose and his brother eliminated, but so does another character who seems to come from left field, a computer entrepreneur whose wife has hired Rose to hide a stolen disk. For all its complications, the plot doesn't add up to much; it's mostly an excuse for Ventura to indulge his ideas about the Vegas mythos (with Sinatra as godhead) and to rue the waning of the old days, symbolized by the Dunes being torn down. Ventura punctuates his narrative with lots of gangster how- to's and some tiresome conspiracy riffs, none of which compensates for a sluggish story. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0805037381
• ISBN 13: 9780805037388
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 305