I was mighty disappointed with "Last Don." I expected a real Mafia novel from the author of "The Godfather." Instead, I found a vehicle for Puzo to show off what he learned about Hollywood. Puzo's one of those authors (like Ian Fleming) who can't resist loading you up with details about things he's learned. Fleming did it with great panache--and he was a swell travel writer, too.

Not so Puzo. In "Godfather," he creates a boring story about Jules and Lucy just so he can describe her gynecological operation, which he probably heard about from a female friend or relative and interested himself in. In "The Last Don," all that Hollywood BS drags the novel right into the ground, and buries it. One of the reasons that the TV movie was so much better than the novel was that it dispensed with most of the Hollywood BS (the other reason was Danny Aiello).