Fools Die: A Thriller

I love this book. It is classic Mario Puzo at his best. The first several pages are a little slow and disjointed. Book 1 is almost completely separated from the main story line. Book 2 is better and, IMO, really takes off in Chapter 4, when the perspective changes from 3rd person to first person. All of this is worth it. It is one of my all time favorite books. Phenomenal story telling from start to finish. Since I’m always rereading books, I read this once a year and often just return to it to read various sections I like especially. I have probably a dozen or so books I do this with. Since the kindle first came out, I’ve been purchasing all of the books I reread on kindle that I reread. Some were available right away, others took a few years. All of my go-to books for rereading were available at least ten years ago. Fools Die has taken at least 15 years, maybe more- I can’t remember the last time I checked if it was available but it must have been between a year to two years ago. This is the best Thanksgiving/Christmas present from Amazon. THANK YOU!!!

Do yourself a favor and read ALL of Mario Puzo's novels. While it's huge culturally due to the film - and the novel was on the bestseller list for well over a year - The Godfather is actually the weakest, if you can believe it, of his literary efforts! This is a very complex novel, and if you want to enter the worlds of degenerate gambling, Hollywood BS and corruption, and NYC BS and corruption, he takes you there, into the very heart of all of it. Again, everything Puzo wrote is praiseworthy, and he knew he was creating art. The mystery to me is why this isn't on Kindle, but I struggled through the blurry print of a mass market paperback and was very glad I did.

I have read this novel many times - I will go on reading it at intervals in the future. The characters are so well developed and one benefit from the fact that the novel has not been turned into a movie is that I have always assigned my own set of "actors". I don't have to be constrained in my imagination to see a set of actors that would have played the characters if a movie had been made. Also - if a movie had been made - the story may have suffered the same fate as Merlyn's own novel did in the novel. This novel could only be translated successfully to the screen if it were turned into a mini-series. Selfishly, part of me hopes it never makes it to the screen....

Gave it 3 stars barely, as most fiction I cannot even finish. Barely 3 stars. I tried reading this after reading the Godfather the first or second time, and did not fiinish it. About 3 years ago, I bought it again, and once again, did not finish it, and actually only got through the first 100 pages, less than my first effort. The 3rd time was rough sledding, with many good passages and basically I got to the end. Several things notworthy about the book: First, it is rather depressing thorughout, with very little humor. The first hundred pages involves a main character's suicide, and from there it does not get much more hopeful, although at times very interesting. A lot of it is about an author (actually two of them), which is very often the case with fiction author's: they like to write about themselves or their hardships, etc...But sometimes these books can be fun and interesting, like Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, a funny and fun book, which also has an eccentric author who does not depress, and also caught in this life. The second thing is the plot. For those of us used to the riveting action packed plot of the Godfather, this one is several steps down. It meanders in and out of Vegas, where the author shows many insights of the industry there, and then manhatten, and then hollywood, and eveen something of Japan. None of it has any action whatsoever to it however. The varioius characters meander in and out. It is almost as if Puzo decided to write a book (or a bunch of small short stories) loosely tied together. Almost like he did not have a finished outline when he began to write, so he just follows his characters along, speaking somewhat depressed through them. Almost like he wrote a book based on his talent, but without a subject matter, or a riveting story. It reads like the back third of the godfather, when the family moves to vegas, but runs out of steam slightly. Here Puzo wanted to tell us of his thoughts about the crummy publishing industry, the crummy casino industry and the crummy scum of hollywood, and he did so through a bunch of characters none of whom, were very attractive. Finally, the women: the first one dissappears after 100 pages with no explanation given, a degenerate gambler along for the ride, and then we meet at least a half dozen more, a wife who is a nothing character completely, then a call girl, another call girl, some geisha's, a japanese call girl, a few others and they are all basically wooden characters. He really does not include his own emotional life when writing about them, nor do they really have any whatsoeer themselves throughout the entire novel. They are the little power toys of the vegas and hollywood guys. A lot of fair looking whores and some beautiful ones for the vegas boys to pawn off on, or sleep with and later pawn off to other guys or turn out, and a lot of vegas and hollywood guys and authors who sleep with them..... so all and all, I think I was somewhat generouis with the 3 stars I gave it. Let's give it 2.5 stars.

I am usually a sci fi/fantasy buff, but this book made me reevaluate where I stood on fiction. The scope of this book is truly impressive, it is not merely a story, it is a chronicle of a mans life. And even this misnomer is misleading, it is not so much a chronicle as a saga. This book will and should live on as an example of one of the greatest works of literature in the 20th century. I am duly impressed with all that Mario Puzo has written, but this book tops all the charts for him and for any other author. This book was great, if you don't read it, you are going to regret it when you son is talking about it in an english class in 20 years.

Not the Godfather but pretty good. It held my interest because of the great prose and the pace.The story itself was not as interesting as I had hope.

Greatest book ever written

I love everything Mario puzo wrote

Not. Now

Una excelente novela Te cautiva desde las primeras páginas y no t suelta hasta el final .... muy muy recomendable

A man, a not-so-ordinary man, a very talented man trained since childhood at keeping a low profile, takes us along a scarring journey where we meet a string of brilliantly depicted intense, passionate, desperate, and supremely egotistic people, who one by one, go up in the flames of their own delusions before his incredulous but pragmatic eyes. The tale of the inconspicuously dominant, self-effacing but tough to the core John Merlyn is, in my eyes, the rawest and the darkest book of Mario Puzo about fate, odds, love, and survival. Despite its at times off-balance construction, it is a gem of writing about urban American life. Up there with Mailer's "an American dream", and such ilk. Jean Fourcade

Value of money

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