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Title: Sugar Pop Moon

Subtitle: A Jersey Leo Novel, Book 1

Author: John Florio

Narrator: Kevin T. Collins

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Jersey Leo is the quintessential outsider - an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father - a former boxing champ with his own secrets - disapproves of Jersey's work at a dive owned by one of New York's most notorious gangsters. So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money - a potentially fatal mistake - he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in.

The clues lead to Philadelphia, where he runs into a cleaver-swinging madman out for his femurs and a cold-blooded gangster holed up on a Christmas-tree farm. Now with a price on his head in two cities, Jersey seeks help from the only man he can trust, his father. As the two delve into the origins of the mysterious sugar pop moon, stunning secrets about Jersey's past come to light. To ensure his future, Jersey must face his past, even if it means that life will never return to normal.

Members Reviews:

Breakneck Pacing--Great Read

If you're a fan of Hammett or Chandler, do yourself a favor and snatch up a copy of John Florio's Sugar Pop Moon. Florio gives his main character, Snowball, a simple problem to solve: a double-crossed booze delivery. But this acts merely as the starting point for a whip-cracking race along the Eastern seaboard as characters run afoul of hard men, thugs, and voodoo fanatics between New York and Philly.

At times, it's clear that this is a freshman novel--there is a slight dependency on exposition, and neither of the two female characters are developed. But these minor issues pale in comparison to the amazing pacing, and the way Florio weaves the first-person, white-knuckle, action-packed prohibition-era adventure with the story of Snowball's father as a boxer who gets caught up in both racial inequity and mobster's avarice. Florio's senses of humor and the every-day-absurd shine through with a clarity that will leave you chuckling, entranced, and gripped.

It's rare that I read a book in a single sitting. This was one of them.

Goes down easy ... thirsty for more!

This novel goes down easy as the "Sugar Pop Moon" moonshine that provides the title. If I were going to compare it to other books and movies, I'd say it's one part "Miller's Crossing" with one part "Boardwalk Empire" with a few drops of Lawrence Block's excellent Matthew Scudder series mixed in. As a reader, I liked how the author shifted from 1930 to an even earlier era to provide the characters' history. The prohibition-era settings from Baltimore to Philadelphia to Brooklyn rang true. The time period and the mobsters really came alive. As a longtime print journalist, I loved the newspaper history as we follow the story of a young reporter on the trail of what really happened during a brutal 1906 prize fight. Tweeting the news just ain't the same. The main character, Jersey Leo, is a standout because he's an albino with a lot of moxy and a wonderful voice: "I get out of the car and Philly's icy air makes my eyes feel like they've been doused in bathtub gin." You enjoy spending time with this guy.