Whacking Jimmy

Whoever the pseudonymous Wolf may be, he knows how to add a fresh twist to familiar material. Although Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance has already been put through the fictional grinder by several authors, most recently Jon R. Jackson in his excellent Man with an Ax, Wolf gives his version of the story depth and originality by energizing characters who easily could have become cliches. Don Vittorio Tucci, the Detroit mob leader whose death kickstarts the plot, is an eminently nasty but utterly believable pragmatist. When his daughter-in-law suggests that his 21-year-old grandson Bobby should be his heir, Don Vittorio says, ""Bobby's a sissy. He's got hair like a girl. He plays the guitar. Last Christmas he told me he wants to write novels, for Christ's sake. He wouldn't last ten minutes."" But Bobby's mother, Annette (the daughter of a Chicago capo, and an astonishingly evil piece of work), persuades the dying man that under her tutelage the boy will do just fine. The fact that Bobby hates his mother and has no desire to enter the family business is also refreshing: there's no instant Michael Corleone-type transformation from upstanding citizen to hoodlum. Wolf has created a gallery of supporting players--a loyal, smart old Jewish sidekick; a pair of inspired black gangsters who keep a boxing kangaroo to soften up the opposition--who are original and often hilarious. As for Hoffa, his death happens far offstage and doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story. But Wolf does have a plausible theory about where his body is buried. 35,000 first printing. (Sept.)