P rizzi's Honor offers a detailed account of the methods of operation of one of the major American Mafia families. Although its protagonists, Charley Partanna and Irene Walker, are professional murderers who have also committed many other crimes, they are treated as executive employees of a large business enterprise rather than as members of a criminal gang. They take pride, in fact, in the consummate skill with which they and their colleagues perform their work: At one point the Mafia is described as "the most efficiently run business organization in the country."

This matter-of-fact acceptance of the functional role of the Mafia goes even farther than the "hoods are human, too" ethos of Puzo's The Godfather. In the latter, the human qualities of the Mafiosi establish that their crimes are being committed by men rather than monsters, but this still does not exempt them from moral...