Kill Only Lesser Men

Book excerpt: Italian and Irish criminals engaged in a brutal war for decades, and it frequently involved the Church of Rome. How will the Italian underworld react when the most influential Irish Catholic family in the world tries to elevate one of its own, a United States senator, to the most powerful office in the worldPresident of the United States? Anthony Martino, a brilliant yet ruthless killer, was called on to prevent the senator from becoming president. Faced with the possibility of battling Irish criminals, the FBI, and members of the Irish Republican Army, he decides to cooperate with the Irish. In the end, will he kill the senator anyway? Irish politicians and Italian criminals had much in common, the most obvious of which was their religion and the manner in which they practiced it, embraced it, and at times corrupted it for their own evil purposes. The Italian-Irish-Church triangle of hypocrisy was held together by a desire for power. Yet there were also a few good men, especially some priests, who were motivated by a simple desire for the greater good. Thinking the triangle had done much that was of value, they did their best to preserve it. The Popes representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Calogero Ferraro, was one such priest. Desperately wanting another Roman Catholic president, he directs the Italians and the Irish to put aside their differences. Will they cooperate, or will the Italian-Irish criminal war explode once again, turning the senator and Anthony Martino into two of its victims?