Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Condon, Richard (Vol. 100) - Joe Queenan (review date 6 February 1994)


Condon, Richard (Vol. 100) - Joe Queenan (review date 6 February 1994)

Joe Queenan (review date 6 February 1994)

SOURCE: "Swept Away by the Hit Man's Daughter," in The New York Times Book Review, February 6, 1994, p. 9.

[In the review below, Queenan finds Prizzi's Money "riotously funny," emphasizing Condon's "acid prose."

Measles rarely plays a pivotal role in books about the Mafia. But when Charley Partanna, hit man's hit man, is suddenly afflicted by a severe case of the measles 49 pages into Richard Condon's hilarious novel Prizzi's Money, he finds himself incapable of accepting a mob contract to go to London to murder Julia Asbury, a brassy woman who is trying to steal $1.4 billion from the infamous Prizzi family. By the time Charley is feeling well enough to ice the truculent whackee, the Prizzis have discovered that Mrs. Asbury is actually Julia Melvini, the daughter of another top Prizzi hit man, known as the Plumber "because of his signature threat to flush recalcitrants down the...

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