Mario Puzo was born in New York. He is the author of the bestselling novel The Godfather and many other acclaimed novels. Puzo also wrote many screenplays, including those for the three Godfather movies, for which he won two academy awards. He died at his home in Long Island, New York, at the age of seventy-eight.

"Fame and wealth, skulduggery and cheating and pimping, love affairs and carnal arrangements, once scene following another pell-mell, all written with unflagging vitality ... bawdy, comic, highly coloured, hypnotic. It would be a very cool reader indeed who did not devour the whole mixture greedily" New York Times "Corruptly compulsive" Daily Express "Unforgettable ... Will rivet your attention" Cosmopolitan