{"id":4755,"date":"2014-05-26T16:50:43","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T16:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=4755"},"modified":"2014-05-26T17:01:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T17:01:25","slug":"charlie-stella","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=4755","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Stella"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Misspent Youth<\/span><\/h3>\n
\"charlie_stella\"<\/a>
Charlie Stella<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My youth wasn\u2019t nearly as misspent as my adult life. I was a young dreamer who clock-watched during school and spent more time playing a baseball card game,\u00a0Strat-O-Matic<\/em>, than doing homework. That said, a 1960 mob movie I became enamored with around age 10 would serve as an epiphany much later in life.<\/p>\n

The movie was\u00a0Pay or Die<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0starring\u00a0<\/em>Ernest Borgnine. Unbeknownst to me,\u00a0it was based on an actual person, the first Italian Lieutenant on the NYPD, Joseph Petrosino. Million Dollar Movie used to play the movie\u00a0<\/em>at least once a year at the same time every day for an entire week. I\u2019m sure I watched it every night possible until they no longer aired it. It was a good guy versus bad guys theme, and I always felt sad at the end of the movie when Borgnine\u2019s character was killed in Sicily, where he\u2019d gone to infiltrate the Mafia. \"pay_or_die\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At some point during my early 40\u2019s, when I was living in the same Little Italy section of Manhattan where much of the movie took place, I was waiting for a loan-sharking customer in front of a tiny triangular park between Lafayette and Kenmare Streets. My customer was late and I was pissed off. Killing time, I read the plaque on the fence and was floored by the inscription: Lt. Petrosino Square. The subject of the movie I\u2019d once been enamored with as a kid wasn\u2019t a fictional character. And there I was, one of the bad guys, standing on holy ground doing exactly what Joseph Petrosino had fought against and eventually died fighting. I was shamed from the inside out. The mob will never be glamorized in any of my novels. It isn\u2019t much in the way of redemption, but it\u2019s the least I can do.<\/p>\n

\"Charlie-Opera-UK_Cover-1\"<\/a>Charlie Stella is one of the most respected writers of mob fiction today. His first six novels all received critical acclaim:\u00a0Eddie\u2019s World (2001); Jimmy Bench-press (2002); Charlie Opera (2003); Cheapskates (2005); Shakedown (2006);\u00a0and\u00a0Mafiya (2008).\u00a0Stella\u2019s seventh novel,\u00a0Johnny Porno\u00a0(2010), is the first original to be published by Stark House. \u00a0Charlie was born in Manhattan and raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn. He lives in New Jersey. \u00a0Visit Charlie\u2019s website<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Misspent Youth My youth wasn\u2019t nearly as misspent as my adult life. I was a young dreamer who clock-watched<\/p>\n

Continue readingCharlie Stella<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4755"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4815,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4755\/revisions\/4815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}