By Colorado Kids Advisory Board member Jeremy Hill

Title: Son of The Mob
Author: Gordon Korman
Illustrator: Polly Kanevsky
Publisher: Hyperion Books
Number of Pages: 262

Vince Luca is an ordinary boy who goes to high school. He wants a girl and all of those typical things. But his family is the worst you could ever get. He started to figure out that his family was different when he was about four. He had asked his mom why all of the other daddies left for work in the morning and his daddy didn't, his mom told him his daddy worked for the vending machine business and he worked different hours. After a while though, Vince figured out that his dad didn't work for the vending machine business but in fact he was the head of a mob.

The rest of Vince's family was also involved in the mob, his brother Tommy joined the mob when he graduated from high school and he mostly deals with James Ratelli a.k.a. Jimmy Rat, a guy who owed his dad money, and he likes to beat up people real badly. Vince's mom is only involved in the family business only a little bit, but that's just all he knows. Also, she doesn't like it when people go out to eat when she's cooking (which is basically all of the time) even though sometimes her cooking isn't that good. Then Vince has all of these weird uncles (most of whom he is positively sure aren't related to him one bit). They are Uncle Fingers, Uncle Puke, Uncle Shank, Uncle Fin, Uncle Pampers, Uncle Exit, two Uncle Noses, two Uncle Big-Noses, two Uncle No-Noses, and an Uncle Uncle but his real nephews call him T-Bird.

As you can predict Vince's father's business interferes with his everyday life. For example: He went on a date with this girl Angela O'Bannon, in his trunk there was supposed to be a blanket but instead Jimmy Rat was there knocked out and bleeding. Vince later found out that his brother had had an "appointment" with Jimmy right before his date. Also, when he was on the football team everyone let him run for the end zone because they were afraid of his dad getting mad at them for tackling Vince. So when Vince meets a girl who he really likes, something has to go wrong. He starts dating Kendra and everything is going fine until Vince finds out Kendra's dad is in the FBI, and he is the agent out to catch Vince's dad. I would definitely recommend this book because it is very exciting and interesting. My age recommendation would be ages 12 and up. (February, 2003)