Savage Kiss

July 1, 2020
Italian journalist/novelist Saviano continues his exploration of Neapolitan youth gangs with a sequel to The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples (2018). Nicolas Fiorillo, who bears the nom de crime Maraja, is emphatically not a nice guy. As Saviano's novel opens, we find him in an obstetrics ward, where he's about to rub out a newborn boy. "Come s'accide 'nu criaturo, Tuca'?" How do you kill a baby, Tucano?" he asks a lieutenant. He's got reason: The baby is the son of the man who killed his brother, just one chit in a long roster of back-and-forth murders among the paranzas, the savage youth gangs, of Naples. Maraja has what might be called a Napoleonic complex, but he really wants to be the Godfather: "Nicolas had always had a weak spot for Don Vito Corleone. He felt just like him: courage above everything else. But that ignoramus of a lawyer was having trouble even registering his Brando imitation." But there are other, grown-up Godfathers whom he must serve first, moving drugs, illegal weapons, prostitutes, and other contraband for bosses like a certain Don Vittorio, to whom Nicolas pledges fealty with the decidedly medieval act of delivering the detached head of a murdered rival. Nicolas is a gangster, but a learned one, preparing to relate the story of Hasdrubal Barca, the Carthaginian leader whom the Romans beheaded, "which is the way of victors." Instead, writes Saviano, Maraja can barely squeak out, "Don Vitto', is this loyalty enough to make you trust the paranza?" Alas, the tests are many, and when Nicolas falls short of them, betrayed by his endless ambition and inexperience, he must pay a stiff penalty. The wheel continues to turn, though; the book closes with teenage boys even younger than Maraja, Tucano, Lollipop, and the other young gangsters of a gang that burns, stabs, and shoots its way to renown and even adulation. There's not an ounce of Mario Puzo's romanticism in this grimly riveting tale of crime and punishment.

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July 13, 2020
Saviano’s disappointing sequel to 2018’s The Piranhas continues the story of a youthful Naples organized crime gang. While the author has done heroic investigative reporting of the Camorra crime syndicate, as detailed in his nonfiction book Gomorrah, this effort leans on mob fiction tropes of de rigeur bloodshed, betrayals, and numerous shoot-outs. The Piranhas’ leader, teenager Nicolas Fiorillo, is bent on vengeance after his brother, Christian, was killed by another young thug, Dentino, who has just become a father. Nicolas targets the newborn baby, but his plan to gun down the infant in the hospital nursery is foiled. Nicolas’s continuing quest for revenge, his fears that his group includes a traitor, and his attempts to expand his power make up the bulk of the plot. Nothing here feels remotely fresh, and Saviano fails to facilitate any empathy for his psychopathic antihero, who places his family in jeopardy thanks to a careless error that’s rather convenient to the plot. Awkward translated prose (“On his tongue, he felt the silence that is created between father and son when they make peace.”) is another negative. Admirers of Saviano’s journalism will hope he sticks to nonfiction.

August 1, 2020
In this stand-alone sequel to Saviano's first novel, The Piranhas (2018), paranza (gang) leader Nicolas returns. Now 18, he is still ambitious to become the King of Naples. He and his nine-member gang?all of whom are his age or younger ( children, Saviano calls them)?are drug traffickers working with the old families of the Camorra, the Neapolitan crime syndicate. Nicolas controls the square Forcella, an area in central Naples, but is determined to take over other squares even if it means eliminating rivals or members of his own paranza, whom he suspects might be betrayers. Saviano has demonstrated his insight into Nicolas' violent world not only in Piranhas but also in his earlier, much celebrated nonfiction book Gomorrah (2007). While its plot is compelling, there are problems with Savage Kiss: it seems to contain more characters than War and Peace, and because their characterizations (except for that of Nicolas) are slight, they are hard to keep straight. The style can be a bit perfervid, too, and the ending is predictable; but, nevertheless, fans of Saviano's earlier work won't want to miss it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)