Probation officer gives office BJ to boot-camp teen 1
Her Diary Is Even Scarier 2
Jury Seeks Death for Slasher 3

Book Review: Charlie Stella's Mafiya a Tale of the Russian Mob and a Snuff Film Gone Bad

Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Charlie-Stella_150.jpg
​He's been likened to Elmore Leonard, but that might be undercutting Stella a tad. For pure crime fiction escapism, Stella likely has the upper hand in this story of a hooker with a past, a Russian mafioso with a moronic brother, and a snuff film no one wants seeing the light of day...

Mafiya
By Charlie Stella
Pegasus Books, 305 pages

Mafiya.jpg
​The deal: You've seen her before. Agnes is the hooker with a tragic past who's left Vegas for the brighter lights of New York City in an attempt to clean up her game. But her friend Rachel is still in the life -- and farming her wares to an Arab arms dealer with a jones for very violent sex. When she's killed in a snuff film produced by the bumbling brother of a Russian mob boss, Agnes must seek revenge -- before mafiosi beat her to the punch.

The upside: As a producer of pure thrillers, Stella takes a back seat to no one. Mafiya is a non-stop bloodbath featuring Manhattan hits, corrupt cops, the bloodiest sex in literature and entire mob crews found floating in the bay. Its cast of characters are drawn for the dramatic -- nearly everyone's larger than life. As escapist crime fiction, this is a sprinting tale of gunfire and imaginative death the rarely lets up.

The downside: You'll have to quarantine your sense of reason. Agnes isn't just a former whore, but a cunning warrior without an inch of fear who naturally rejects the help of her ex-cop boyfriend so Stella can nakedly heighten the drama.

The Russian mob isn't just a bunch of goobers running white collar scams and extorting fellow immigrants. It has greater intelligence powers than the CIA and KBG combined, and can find anyone anywhere at a moment's notice. Most strange: They're perplexingly intent of killing every contact in Rachel's cell phone in a rather un-Mafia-like attempt to draw as much attention to themselves as possible.

Closing Arguments: If it's straight-up escapism you're looking for, it probably doesn't much better than this. But if you're the kind of reader that likes at least a trace of reality in your fiction, better to pass this by.

Grade: B-

In the last episode of Book Reviews: Box 21: A Swedish Sex Slave Thriller that Translates Well to American Readers.

Tags: Book Reviews, New York

More links from around the web!

Email Print