The Confessions of Al Capone

April 29, 2013
Edgar-finalist Estleman (Burning Midnight) presents a nuanced and compelling fictionalized portrait of the best-known gangster of them all, Al Capone. In 1944, J. Edgar Hoover pulls Peter Vasco off a desk job for a special undercover assignment. Capone is in Florida, dying of syphilis, and Hoover hopes the right person can get information from him that would enable the bureau to make cases against successors to his criminal throne. As Vasco’s father was acquainted with the mobster from a long-ago incident, the young investigator is tapped to pose as a priest and work his way into Capone’s inner circle to elicit what useful information he can. The book alternates between third-person description of Vasco’s efforts and a convincing first-person narration by Capone as he shares some of his secrets. Estleman captures his lead’s ambivalence at deceiving others for a greater good perfectly, and the directions the plot takes aren’t always foreseeable. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

June 1, 2013
From the always reliable Estleman comes this involving novel in which a low-level employee of the FBI is given a plum assignment: infiltrate the inner circle of Al Caponerecently released from Alcatrazand get as much information as he can about Capone's fellow criminals. Peter Vasco is picked for the job because he has an entr'e into Capone's world (his father once did some odd jobs for Capone's gang), and posing as a priest, he quickly gains Capone's confidence. He expected to get some good dirt on the man, but one thing Vasco didn't expect was that he would like Capone. This is really two books in one: the story of Vasco's relationship with Capone, and Capone's own story, told in his own (fictionalized) words. Estleman looks at the gangster with a compassionate eye, revealing him to be ruthless and violent, of course, but also to be a devoted family man with a deep, albeit ambiguous, moral core. We've seen Capone before, in movies and in books, but we haven't seen him like thisa textured human being for whom crime is a career but isn't necessarily what defines him.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)