|
Noir News |
|
The Literature |
|
Crime |
|
Miscellany |
|
Guestbook |
|
Search Noirnovels |
|
|
NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
The Angel Of Montague Street
Reviewed By Steve Nester In Norman Green?s second novel The Angel of Montague Street the only acknowledgment returning Vietnam War veteran Silvano Iurata receives are cursory hellos and warnings that his life is in danger. Though jungle warfare can be hell, so can the streets of Brooklyn circa 1973 when a low level Mafiosi wants to do to you what the North Vietnamese guerrillas couldn?t. A former foot soldier and CIA assassin, Silvano returns to the pre-yuppified Brooklyn Heights to find his lost brother, the mentally incompetent Nunzio?Noonie to those from the neighborhood. Eventually Silvano will have to confront his cousin Little Dom, who wants Silvano dead. Little Dom believes Silvano ruined his life and his sister?s and is responsible for the death of his mother. Little Dom has been waiting for the moment he can wring the life from Silvano with his own two hands. Using stealth and aid from the homeless and local eccentrics he has befriended, Silvano attempts to trace the steps of Noonie around Brooklyn Heights. Silvano gets as far as an armored car company, Noonie?s last place of employment, before he uncovers a robbery plot involving insiders and Little Dom. Along the way in the search for Noonie Silvano has some serious demons to allay and needs to become re-acquainted with civilian life. Since he was a mobster in training before he joined the army, Silvano was not very familiar with what would pass for a normal life, but he tries; and after meeting a woman who asks for honesty as a requirement for a relationship, Silvano can begin to construct himself. The Angel of Montague Street takes place in the waning days of the Vietnam War, and involves the underworld in American society, which may bring to mind the novelist Robert Stone, but the similarity ends there. There are no cultural references or signposts or counter culture refugees on the run after the 60?s and its idealism died an agonizing death of violence and drug overdose. The Brooklyn in Green?s novel is a small town and the characters in it are the nameless people who live in SRO hotels and who wander the streets collecting scrap to sell; or are small time hoods working hard to show monetary fealty to a capo. Honor among members of the Mafia runs out just as soon as an underling is unable to provide a piece of the action to the bigger fish higher up in the food chain. Silvano?s challenge is to revisit his past and make peace with it in order to move ahead with his life. But when ?the past is the worst neighborhood around? and most of its inhabitants would rather have him dead, it is difficult to shed bad old habits because some of them are keeping Silvano alive. |
|
Add a review |
|
|