Hollywood Bilker (Alex Cohen Book Six) by Leopold Borstinski

 

Hollywood Bilker (Alex Cohen Book Six) by Leopold Borstinski.

Published 8th October 2021 by Sobriety Press.

From the cover of the book:

Is building another casino worth dying for?

Jewish gangster, Alex Cohen returns to America and settles in 1960s California to build a drug and prostitution empire in LA. When he gets a call from the mob to help the CIA invade Cuba, Alex must decide between family and his business associates.

If he helps Uncle Sam and the Mafia then he puts his life on the line fighting for freedom and the chance to rebuild his Havana casinos. If he refuses the favour then death will call on him, his ex-wife and their sons. 

Once he agrees to one accommodation then others are sure to follow, in a decade where even presidents, assassins and presidential candidates were whacked at a terrifying rate.

The sixth book in the Alex Cohen series is an historical thriller novel, which rips open Jewish organized crime involvement in Lee Harvey Oswald's death and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Leopold Borstinski's searing crime fiction lays bare the making of today’s USA.

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Welcome to book six in the Alex Cohen series, which explores the world of Jewish organised crime in 20th century USA. 

Alex and his ex-wife Sarah, now firmly back together as a couple, have been pondering their future after their flight from the turmoil of revolutionary Cuba. The safety offered to them in Florida by friends high up in the Italian mob is all very well, but it offers little in the way of opportunities for their own family business without stepping on some very unforgiving toes. Having acquired a taste for the high living that the world of entertainment can offer, but not keen to return to the casino life in Vegas where Alex's businesses are prospering under the competent hands of his lieutenants Ezra and Massimo, they decide to relocate to LA instead. Using the contacts Alex has built up during his years in the casino business, the money soon begins to roll in from their newly established drug and prostitution operations, and they begin to settle into the California lifestyle with thoughts of retirement in the not too distant future.

Brushing shoulders with Hollywood royalty brings Alex into the sphere of some very famous names in the film and music industries of the 1960s, and through them into the society of shady politicians - especially the Kennedy family, whose political fortunes are on the rise. It is an association that will bring him untold riches, get him into some very sticky situations, and ultimately decide his own future. 

Hollywood Bilker follows on quite naturally from the direction Alex and his family's lives have taken in the previous two books of this series - Casino Chisler and Cuban Heel. Building on his casino and entertainment contacts, Alex is drawn towards the magic of Tinsel Town, where Hollywood stars can provide a willing market for his own offerings - drugs and women. Cue some big names of the stage and screen in these pages - some well known for their association with organised crime, such as Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack buddies, and some not. It was lots of fun celebrity spotting, and Leopold Borstinski is certainly very bold about some of the real life characters Alex associates with!

This book starts out with a much mellowed Alex, happy to be back on good terms with his ex-wife Sarah and reconciled with at least some of his sons. His time in Hollywood is a winding down of sorts, as he managed to get away with a nice nest egg from his otherwise disastrous flirtation with casinos in Cuba, but he is still keen to build up his fortunes before converting his assets to legitimate holdings - and retirement is beckoning.

As usual, Alex's less accommodating business partners throw in a curve ball here and there, and intriguingly this means that he is called upon to get involved in events he would rather avoid by putting to use some of the skills he has not personally had to call on for some time, harkening all the way back to his strike busting days in New York and his assassination years with Murder Inc. However, rather than the gangster scene he is used to operating in, this time his efforts are directed towards the political arena, which brings him into contact with a very famous family in the world of 1960s politics - the Kennedys. I really enjoyed the way Borstinski ties Alex's fortunes to that of the Kennedy family here and echoing some of Alex's own life experiences - with a meteoric rise backed by less than squeaky clean money; salacious secrets that need to be kept from prying eyes; and attempts to distance oneself from a dodgy past. Alex becomes embroiled in events taken straight out of the history books, and it was fascinating to see how Borstinski inserted his fictional creation into the fates of Bobby and John (Jack) Kennedy, cleverly linking him with their assassinations too. There is also a fabulous episode where Alex finds himself involved in the botched invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961, which was great fun.

This is a book that has a much wider scope that any of the previous Alex Cohen books, and Borstinski handles all the twists and turns confidently and sometimes a little playfully, which makes the story very engaging indeed - especially if you have been with Alex from the start, as I have. Eventually, all of Alex's escapades in this instalment find him forced into taking his oft promised threats of retirement more seriously than ever before, but I suspect that there will still be plenty to tickle my gangster noir loving taste-buds in his final adventure The Mensch coming in 2022 - I can't wait!

Hollywood Bilker is available to buy now in ebook via the link HERE.

Thank you to ZooLoo's Book Tours for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

If you are interested in catching up with my reviews of the previous five books in the Alex Cohen books, you can find the links below:

Book One -    The Bowery Slugger

Book Two -    East Side Hustler

Book Three-   Midtown Huckster

Book Four -    Casino Chisler

Book Five -    Cuban Heel

About the author:

Leopold Borstinski is an independent author whose past careers have included financial journalism, business management of financial software companies, consulting and product sales and marketing, as well as teaching.

There is nothing he likes better so he does as much nothing as he possibly can. He has travelled extensively in Europe and the US and has visited Asia on several occasions. Leopold holds a Philosophy degree and tries not to drop it too often.

He lives near London and is married with one wife, one child and no pets.