The Last Don is Mario Puzo at his finest, thrilling us with his greatest Mafia novel since The Godfather, a masterful saga of the last big American crime family and its powerful reach into Hollywood and Las Vegas.
Domenico Clericuzio, the wise and ruthless don of a mafia empire, is determined to see his heirs established in legitimate society. But this vision is threatened when secrets from the family’s past spark a vicious war between two blood cousins. This is a mesmerizing tale that takes us inside the equally corrupt worlds of the mob, the movie industry, and the casinos, where beautiful actresses and ruthless hit men are ruled by lust and violence, where sleazy producers and greedy studio heads are drunk with power, where crooked cops and desperate gamblers play dangerous games of betrayal, and where one man controls them all.
Mario Puzo (1920–1999) was born in “Hell’s Kitchen” on Manhattan’s West Side, New York City. Following military service in World War II, he attended New York’s New School for Social Research and Columbia University. In addition to his best-known novel, The Godfather, and other books, he wrote several screenplays including Superman and all three Godfather movies, for which he received two Academy Awards.
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.