Felonious Monk

Book Review - Thriller/Adventure

https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/book-review-thriller-adventure-48544b6e905

Felonious Monk by William Kotzwinkle

This is an engaging thriller with a Marty Stu problem. 

Tommy Martini is twenty-six years old and a Benedictine monk. He is probably a novitiate since that is how things work in Benedictine monasteries. He entered the monastery when he was twenty-one after accidentally killing someone while working as a bouncer. Tommy is big, strong, and gifted in martial arts. 

He also has an anger problem which he probably inherited from his family, who are mafia royalty. Tommy's grandfather, Primo, was the head of a New Jersey crime family. His generation of the family has mostly left “the life,” but they have enough connections to get government contracts and bury bodies in the foundations of buildings.

Tommy differs from the family in being a white knight. He leaves the monastery by helping a teenager avoid enlistment in the town's cartel. He ends up in Arizona because of the death of his uncle Vittorio. As Tommy discovers, Vittorio is a priest who never left the family tradition. 

After Vittorio leaves the bulk of his inheritance to Tommy, Tommy discovers that he also left the entanglement of a surprising number of grifts and swindles with people who think Tommy should pay. That puts Tommy on a journey of discovery as he works at learning what Vittorio was up to and where the loot went.

Not surprisingly, this turns into a showcase of Tommy's gift of violence. The whole thing is very entertaining in a thriller/adventure way. In particular, a scene where Tommy is picked up as a bystander in a gang hit is very exciting as a set piece of the action. I enjoyed this very much, but as an objective reader stepping back, Tommy seems a bit too good in his fights, almost a Marty Stu character in that things are just a tad too easy for him. On the other hand, this is not what I was thinking while I was reading, which speaks to the author making the sale by keeping my interest. 

The story zipped along. I liked the characters. I liked the goofy Italian mafia family stuff. The story
makes for a good diversion which is all it tries to be.