Crooks

Berney (Dark Ride) shines in this enthralling epic, which covers more than 50 years in the lives of the Mercurio crime family. In 1961, patriarch Buddy, a low-level member of the Chicago mafia, is 22 and living in Las Vegas. His life changes when he meets beautiful swindler Lillian Ott. The two hit it off from their first conversation, and immediately jump into a relationship and start planning a family. When Buddy is tipped off that his boss has discovered his side hustles and ordered him killed, they flee to Oklahoma. In the following years, Buddy and Lillian have five children—Jeremy, Tallulah, Ray, Alice, and Piggy—each of whom inherits some aspect of their parents’ criminal tendencies. The action then shifts to the children’s triumphs and failures, including Tallulah’s time in 1990s Moscow, where she gets involved with human traffickers; the hyper-meticulous Alice’s failed attempt to go straight as an attorney at a white-shoe law firm in New York; and favorite son Jeremy’s rise and fall in 1980s Hollywood. The tone is lighter than in Berney’s previous books, but the episodic structure and focus on character over action charms. Fans of Elmore Leonard will eat this up. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory. (Sept.)