A Suspenseful Multigenerational Saga of a Crime Family's Dark Legacy, Unforgettable Corruption, and the Inescapable Shadow of the Underworld...
A Novel About Crime and Family
By: Lou Berney
ISBN: 9780063445574
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: 09/09/2025
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: TBR
From award-winning author Lou Berney comes an electrifying new novel that follows a uniquely American crime family on an unforgettable journey across four decades.
You’ve never met a family like the Mercurios.
They say the American dream is going farther in life than your parents ever did. But how does that work if your parents are criminals?
For Buddy, a low-level mob wise guy, and Lillian, a charming pickpocket, the criminal underworld is the only life they’ve ever known. When they’re forced to flee the glittering Babylon of Las Vegas, they end up opening a club in Oklahoma City—a town that quickly feels like a gold mine of fresh marks and easy new money. Along for the ride are their five children, all of them raised into the family business of crime—until the day comes when they each have a chance to make their own way in the world, even if they can never completely escape the family’s long, dark shadow.
Jeremy, the family’s Golden Boy, will throw himself into the glittering excesses of a drug-fueled Hollywood in the roaring 1980s.
Tallulah, the daredevil, will find herself in the deadly Wild West of post-communist Moscow.
Ray, the dope, the dumb muscle since he was a kid, wants nothing more than to put down his gun, but following orders is all he’s ever known.
Alice, the genius who renounced her life of crime long ago, now sees her white-shoe law firm being blackmailed and must tap into old skills to save both the company and her own life.
And Piggy, a civilian always on the outside looking in on his crime family, desperate to be part of the gang.
Crooks is an epic novel about a truly unforgettable family–forty years of peril as each Mercurio has to grapple, in their own way, with the family’s powerful criminal legacy.
About the Author
Lou Berney is the Edgar Award-winning author of Dark Ride, November Road, The Long and Faraway Gone, Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight, all from William Morrow/HarperCollins.
Lou Berney is the author of the novels Dark Ride (Sept. 19, 2023), November Road, The Long and Faraway Gone, Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight. His books have won the Edgar, Hammett, Steel Dagger, Barry, Macavity, Lefty, and Anthony awards, and he has been a finalist twice for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches at Oklahoma City University. WEBSITE
Double Barrel Bluff (Shake Bouchon #3) (Nov. 5, 2024)
Dark Ride (2023)
November Road (2018)
The Long and Faraway Gone (2015)
Whiplash River (Shake Bouchon #2) (2012)
Gutshot Straight (Shake Bouchon #1) (2010)
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My two older sisters liked to play school with me, whether I liked it or not, and so I learned to read, whether I liked it or not, at a very early age.
Between the ages of 12 and 19, I was fired from approximately nine different jobs. A representative sampling: newspaper delivery boy (dereliction of duty), grill cook (lying about my age to get the job), apartment complex maintenance man (general incompetence), photo darkroom attendant (dereliction of duty, general incompetence, inappropriate use of darkroom).
Since the age of 19, I have not been fired from a job.
A (very) small and incomplete sampling of my favorite writers, in no particular order: Kate Atkinson, Elmore Leonard, Kelly Link, Walter Mosley, Laura Lippman, Flannery O’Connor, Don Winslow, Megan Abbott, Rachel Kushner, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, Stephen Harrigan, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ivy Pochoda, Lynda Barry, Tod Goldberg.
A few excellent new/newish crime writers to check out: David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Angie Kim, S.A. Cosby, Erica Neubauer, Joseph Schneider, Nadine Nettmann, Wanda Morris.
