SOURCE: "Mafia Mia," in Times Literary Supplement, October 13, 1972, p. 1214.

In the following review, Kingsland approves of Puzo's self-revelatory writings in The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions.

Mario Puzo rates his bestseller, The Godfather, below his other novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965) and frankly admits that he wrote it primarily to make money. He needed to, being some $20,000 in debt, but once committed to the business of writing he clearly found scope in it for the skill which thirty years' experience of story-telling had given him.

The Godfather Papers contains reprinted and new pieces—articles, stories, reviews, anecdotes, memoirs, diary-entries—all written since 1965 with the exception of Mr. Puzo's first published story (1950). They are understandably uneven in quality, but each has something to add to the portrait of the writer and his world. There is a good deal about Mr. Puzo's passions, the chief of which...