I had originally classified this as "contemporary literature" among other things. Well, it's not literature. It is a fast moving story with a childish plot, cardboard characters and lots of bloodshed.

It follows the life story of Astorre Viola, a young man programmed to be a true Sicilian. There are sub-plots galore involving his step-father/uncle Don Raymonde Aprile and his three cousins as well as a gaggle of Sicilan and American Mafia Dons and soldiers, a couple bent cops, a conflicted FBI age More...

A fan of The Godfather, I attempted to read this book a few years back. I found it dull and abandoned it. I decided to pick it back up while on vacation over this past week. While I finished it this time, I was not much more impressed. The book is thematically directionless, hopping listlessly between scenes at various places, from various perspectives, and at various points in time. The core narrative is that of revenge. There are several characters involved, but they are all fixated either on More...

“In the stone-filled village of Castellamare del Golfo, facing the dark Sicilian Meditarranean, a great Mafia Don lay dying.” That is the first sentence of the book and already it is interesting. You can see the beautiful view of the village and one wants to know what, why, and how this great Don is dying. Omerta: a Sicilian(not Italian) code of honor which forbids informing about crimes thought to be affairs of the persons involved. The book Omerta, by Mario Puzo, is a fascinating tale of veng More...

Omerta is a story of Italian Mafia (What else can you expect from Mario Puzo?). There are the usual elements that you expect from Puzo - Sicily, New York, multiple conspirators, 2 generations, et al. Given all the background, this is still significantly different from “The Godfather”. The hero, Astorre, is an interesting character with genuine passion for singing, horse-riding and macaroni business. Of course, he is hand-picked by his foster-father (a respected Don) to handle the family wealth a More...

Omerta mengisahkan tentang sebuah keluarga mafia. Berawal dari Don Raymonde Aprile, seorang kepala mafia yang disegani oleh beberapa grup lainnya, memutuskan untuk mengundurkan diri dari percaturan dunia mafia yang penuh dengan tangan kotor.

Ketiga anaknya; Valerius ditempatkan di West Point, Marcantonio sebagai seorang pengusaha eksekutif jaringan televisi, dan Nicole seorang pengacara di bidang hak asasi manusia (menentang hukuman mati).

Demi melindungi segenap keturunannya, Don Aprile menggembl More...

Update - not as good as I'd hoped.

Definitely reads more like John Grisham with elements of Tom Clancy.

The lack of an immersive background really wears after a while.

All in, fairly decent but not great. Neither as bad as The Last Don, nor as good. Not as good as The Family, and not a patch on the Godfather, of course.

Might try the Fourth K as my next Puzo, when I get round to it.

******

When I first read this on publication it seemed like the weakest of Puzo's mafia novels. More than anything i More...

Having absorbed The Godfather a couple of years ago, I was really looking forward to Omerta, only to be disappointed in how flat it was. While Godfather had interesting, multidimensional characters who felt like they had proper motivations for their actions, Omerta feels more like a second-rate TV show in the depiction of its characters. They are drawn as simply and as lazily as possible. Their actions feel strange, though I sometimes felt Puzo was straining to do so.

The story also lacked flair. More...

I really did like this book a lot. It had a lot of violence in it though so would probably rate this with an R simply because of that. There is sex, but only the basic talk and not a lot of detail.

Omerta is the Italian word for Code Of Silence. It is the story about a nephew by the name of Astorre Viola who is trained to take over the family business when the Don retires. No one in the family knows this except for the Don and his immediate friends in the business. Astorre seems to be this weird More...

De Código Omerta nunca voy a olvidar una parte del libro cuando una agenta afroamericana esta investigando el caso, en la familia, y están comiendo en un área común todos los oficiales juntos, y en este caso hay un oficial blanco y un oficial afroamericano, el oficial blanco se propasa de una manera con la oficial mujer afroamericana y ella se da cuenta que su compañero afroamericano no se digno en defenderla, a lo que ella menciona, que los hombros tienden a ayudarse entre si, no por su condici More...

All the depth and character development of a Scooby Doo script.

great book by mario puzo, if you like godfather, you should read this book...a story of mafioso family...what i like about italian mafia is their loyalty to the family, they will do anything for their family even they must kill somebody for that...

A good read, but needed more character development

I've always enjoyed Mario Puzo books, and I have read just about all of his books. Omerta is 'The Godfather' set in the early 1990s. Astorre Viola, sets out to find his uncle's killer. While he is doing this the FBI is investigating the family business and there's sections that cover Sicily.

I wanted to give this book 4 stars but while the writing was fine, and the dialogue great, I wanted more character development which made Godfather a classic. More...

Very entertaining mob novel from the late Mario Puzo. It's got a faster pace than "The Godfather" with less attention to psychological detail. Whereas "The Godfather" was a story with deep characters and emotion, "Omerta" is more of a fun thriller. Puzo writes so well here, it's a full mob drama with all of the slow stuff cut out. It's just bang-bang-bang as it goes through, great stuff. The novel continues Puzo's obsession of organized criminals with honor and corrupt greedy law enforcement but More...

A very fast paced action novel. Omerta is a sicilian code of silence, which prohibts the person from giving information about criminal activities. It is practiced by Mafia which apparently can be find anywhere and everywhere.

When the great DON ZENO died he asked his three friends to look after his boy. Don Aprile was incharge of Attore brought up. After the murder of Don Aprile, Attore looked after his empire and children. In true sense he became a DON.

I really didn't like the abrupt ending and More...

Omerta tends to get overshadowed, perhaps rightfully, by The Godfather. If you enjoyed The Godfather you will enjoy Omerta and vice versa. It is the third ‘Mafia story’ by Puzo, The Sicilian being the other. Puzo crafted a novel about ‘his favorite’ subject that arguably suited his writing the best. The characters stay with you. You care for them, you try and see all the angles before things take place and you often don’t end up seeing the curveballs which makes it entertaining. If you have a yo More...

This is the first book by Mario Puzo that I have read and I was pleasantly satisfied. It is also the last book by Mario Puzo to be published before his death.

Omerta (the Sicilian code of silence) is a true Mafia story. The plot centers on Astorre Viola, the son of an elderly Silcilian Don who dies when the boy is very young and leaves his son to be raised by Don Raymonde Aprile as his own in New York.

Unbeknownst to the Don's own children (who have no actual knowledge of their father's business), More...

I finished this book a few days ago and I still don't know how I feel about Astorre Viola.

With Omerta, Puzo re-envisions the Mafia Don in a world where old Mafioso traditions have wasted away. Ideas of honor and nobility, of executing uncompromising and unforgiving justice, of self-righteousness and God or King complexes, have all but disappeared. Things such as greed and unnecessary accumulation of power have now taken their place at the table.

Astorre Viola discovers his roots in those old tr More...

"Крестный отец" был гениальной книгой. "Сицилиец" был гениальной книгой, бомба два раза попала в одну и ту же воронку, но в третий раз не попала.
В этой книге нет прекрасных, харизматичных персонажей, сюжет интригует, но не очень сильно. Сцен, хватающих за душу и поражающих, тут нет, как и внятного стиля повествования - события меняются, просто с космической скоростью и что важнее: это мало заметно. Читаешь главу, в ней об одном из героев и вдруг, в один момент, понимаешь - это уже другая страна More...

Good lord.

Pacing- much too fast compared to the build of his other books
Characters- cartoonish (one eyed crazy black FBIwoman? sexy trickster acting whore? Mafia head intent on securing a nuclear weapon??... yeah)
Plot- predictable, annoying

Book would have been much improved with a twist at the end! Maybe Astorre has to go back in time to kill Don Aprile for killing his father?? In true mafioso style.

Reads like a screenplay to a movie you wouldn't pay to see :C Sad finish to Puzo's Mafia books. More...

Mario Puzo selalu identik dengan kisah-kisah mafia. Novelnya yang paling terkenal adalah The Godfather (1969). Sedangkan Omerta (2000) adalah novelnya yang diterbitkan setahun setelah kematiannya. Novel inipun juga berisi kisah para mafioso. Omerta sendiri menurut World Book Dictionary artinya adalah hukum kehormatan Sisilia yang melarang pemberian informasi tentang kejahatan-kejahatan yang dianggap merupakan urusan orang-orang yang terlibat.

Kisah ini dimulai pada 1967.
Saat itu Don Zeno tengah s More...

As a long time fan of Mario Puzo and a lover of his books I was incredibly disappointed in Omerta and found it almost painful to read, in remembrance of his greater past works. All of the things which I love in Puzo's work, his complex characters, depth in plot, vividness of the scenes and settings, the ability to transport the reader into another world, were missing from this book.

The characters were flat, the plot was shallow, and prose was medicare, and the storyline lacked true believabilit More...

Omerta was a very interesting book which at times kept me reading throughout the night. It is a novel much like The Godfather, about Mafia businesses and murders. This novel is very good and kept me entertained like the Godfather. The storyline is very engaging, and the ending is satisfying, yet hard to explain without giving too much detail. I would recommend this book to anybody who has read The Godfather and liked it.

Another book about the Mafia. The "hero" of the book was the son of a Don, orphaned at age 2 and raised by another Don. Usual brutal murders, retaliations, etc. Attempted to show that our banking system is being used to launder money from gang activities. This was Puzo's last book; think he was running out of anything new to say after all the "Godfather" books.

This a BAD book. It was only published recently and I remember to have read that it was found between Puzo's finished works after he died -or something like that. I firmly believe this is a story from somebody who thought he or she could make some money using Puzo's name.
This is clearly an unfinished work, not revised by the author.

Should be a 2.5.

Relatively fast-paced. I didn't connect with any of the characters (Rosie actively annoyed me), though Don Aprile's children were all more or less sympathetic. Maybe I'll read the Godfather, maybe I won't. It is possible to write a character who does terrible things and still comes across as honorable.

This is the third book in Puzo's Mafia trilogy and the most modest in scale. It feels a bit short and rushed, but the characters are memorable and the plot is classic Puzo. The brevity is actually a strength, because there are fewer digressions from the central plot than in some of Puzo's other works.

It was a total waste of time. Having read ''The Godfather",''The Last Don", and loving them, this book was a disappointment. The title ''Omerta'' caught my eye,and I was hoping they'll be a family secret I'd uncover while reading it but it was more like a story from some low rated crime shows.

I thought that this was a well written book about the new generation of the mafia. It is about a man named Astorre who throughout his life had been trained to be a great mafia leader. As well as trained to protect the family of his foster father A great Don. Within this book is a sense of the Sicilian honor and pride in the Mafia.

I was given this book as a present by family members who knew of my life long obsession with The Godfather and Mario Puzo. I read the book, honestly I don't remember much about it. It didn't impress me very much. I think it was a fairly entertaining read, page-turner, but not a lot of substance.

Don Raymonde Aprile se retira de la Mafia tras haberle dedicado toda su vida. Sus tres hijos han crecido ajenos a los oscuros negocios paternos y, para mantenerles así, decide pasar el relevo al joven Astore, a quién adoptó años atrás para formarlo y convertirlo en su mano derecha.