"Exciting but very bloody suspense crime thriller"

A decade may have passed since Capone killed his family, but Michael Satariano nee O'Sullivan never forgot even though he was lovingly adopted. Now twenty, Michael is on Bataan where he wipes out a Japanese division, loses an eye, but is a survivor of the death march. Michael receives the Congressional Medal of Honor and an honorable discharge.

Back in the States, Michael believes it is time to become the avenging angel of death. Through Papa Satariano, Michael meets Capone's Lieutenant Frank Nitti, who hires him as a welcome addition to the Outfit. Eliot Ness thinks he is exploiting Michael as an insider breaking up Capone's Outfit. As Michael causes destruction, mayhem and death from the inside, back in 1922 in Rhode Island, Michael Sr., the chief enforcer for Irish Godfather John Looney, is about to become a father for the first time, not realizing that the newborn was to become a killing chip off the old block.

This sequel to the ROAD TO PERDITION is an exciting but very bloody suspense crime thriller starring an intriguing protagonist whose soul was sucked out of him a decade earlier. Ironically, Michael's amoral murdering spree as an American soldier and a mob soldier will fascinate readers yet because he is so frozen without even a hint of remorse he is unlikable and the tale fails to show heart. Still this is a solid O'Sullivan next generation entry that contains parallel stories of unaffected 1940s Michael, Jr. vs. the elation of 1920s Michael, Sr. when he becomes a daddy (albeit still a killing machine -- must be in the DNA).

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 29, 2004

Summary

It's 1942, and -- from the Atlantic to the Pacific -- the world is torn apart. Ten years earlier Michael O'Sullivan accompanied his gangster father on the road, fleeing from the mobsters who killed his mother and young brother. After an idyllic upbringing by loving adoptive parents in a small Midwestern town, Michael is now deep in the jungles of Bataan, carrying a tommy gun like his father's, fighting the Japanese. When brutal combat unearths deep-buried feelings of violence and revenge, Michael returns to the homefront a battle-scarred veteran of twenty-two, ready to pick up his old war against the Chicago Mob. Suddenly, Michael "Satariano" must become one of the enemy, working his way quickly up to the trusted side of Frank Nitti, Al Capone's heir, putting himself -- and his soul -- in harm's way. Leaving behind his heartbroken childhood sweetheart, the war hero enters a limbo of crime and corruption -- his only allies: Eliot Ness, seeking one last hurrah as a gangbuster, and a lovely nightclub singer playing her own dangerous game. Even as Michael embraces his father's memory to battle the Mob from within -- leaving bodies and broken lives in his wake -- he finds himself sucked into the very way of life he abhors. In a parallel tale set in 1922, Michael O'Sullivan, Sr., chief enforcer for Irish godfather John Looney, is about to become a father. The bidding of Looney -- and the misdeeds of the ganglord's crazed son Connor -- put the happy O'Sullivan home at risk. Both Michaels reach a crossroads of violence and compromise as two tales converge into the purgatory of good men trapped in bad lives.