Robert Ely

"Letters of an Imprisoned Mobster" Robert Ely

"Letters Of An Imprisoned Mobster" is a satire depicting the droll and macabre nature of an Irish-American mobster, poetically and savagely expressed in his prison correspondence to a host of foreboding, zany and hilarious characters. While doing hard time in Federal prison, Seamus "Red" Halligan, shares madcap correspondence with his streetwise eccentric wife, IRA supporting mother, liberal-intellectual girlfriend, assorted mob cronies, blandish attorney, and his old, contrary, Irish parish priest. There is also an anonymous author who writes diabolical and risible letters to "Red" in hopes of breaking him mentally and spiritually, while he is locked down in prison. Bestowed with the nickname "The Enforcer" within the ranks of his adopted mob family, "Red" is held in roguish high esteem as a fearsome, professional leg-breaker among the denizens of the underworld. But ironically "Red" is also blessed by the powerful unseen forces in life, with a rare scholarly nature, deeply ingraining in him a profound yearning to study the great mysteries of life, as he struggles with his inner dark demons to elevate himself above the ordinary rank of mob life. In the lonely depths of prison isolation, alone with his insatiable intellectual hunger, "Red" miraculously discovers on the Great Road of Life, a cerebral, spiritual and cosmic revelation. As this surreal metamorphous evolves, "Red" develops into a caricature resembling a disciple of the ancient cynic Diogenes, cloistered, fasting, pedantic and monkish; but habitually interlaced with the roguish soul of the unscrupulous mobster. With lavish amusing candor, "Red" elaborates in his prison letters his epiphany and nirvana, concerning religion, love, philosophy, and the joy life. In "Letters Of An Imprisoned Mobster," timeless, irascible gangsters nicknamed, Fat Joe "Bones," Big Tony "The Mattress," Eddie "The Slab," and mob boss Vinny "Blas¿" swagger onto the stage of life, sporting a classy hoodlum style, never to be forgotten.