That's very interesting, Liz.

I was not aware that Puzo wrote under any other name, so I don't recall ever seeing that mentioned here, either.

I Googled the name; he apparently wrote another book as well under the name Mario Cleri - "The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw".

The Godfather was dedicated to "Anthony Cleri", who I just discovered was his brother.

Why the different surname, I don't know. Perhaps "Puzo" was the pen name and "Cleri" the real family name.

One of the sites also indicated that "Cleri" was short for "Clericuzio", which was the name he gave the Mafia family in one of his later novels (Omerta or The lst Don - I forget which).