Sugar Pop Moon
John Florio
Seventh Street Books
Trade paper $15.95
Ebook $11.99  Kindle Nook

Sugar Pop Moon is a high class moonshine made from beets. It’s also a fine novel. Take your pick. Either way, it will be top notch.

Most of the story is set in New York during Christmas of 1930. (There’s a secondary plot taking place in 1906 filling in part of the backstory.) The country is sinking deeper into the Great Depression. Jersey Leo, AKA Snowball, is a young albino, the illegitimate son of a black boxer and a white gangster’s daughter. To make ends meet, he runs a speakeasy owned by Jimmy McCullough, a major gangster and bootlegger. Jimmy’s laying low after a raid when Snowball, in a bind because the regular supplier won’t deal with him directly, buys a shipment of what is supposed to be a high end moonshine known as sugar pop moon from a Philadelphia gangster. Only what he gets isn’t high end. It’s swill.

Now Snowball has to track down the gangster and get Jimmy’s money back before Jimmy returns. Easier said than done, when there are powerful people who don’t want Snowball to find the man he’s looking for. Throw in some members of a crazed voodoo sect who collect the bones of albinos, and Snowball will soon have his hands full.

I like a good Depression-era gangster tale, and this one delivers. Snowball is a fascinating character. He’s young, and as the young often do, he’s made mistakes. Unlike many youngsters, though, he’s smart enough to recognize when he’s taken a wrong turn (although it may take him a while). Snowball isn’t a knight walking the mean streets. Rather he’s just a guy trying to stay alive, and maybe correct some of his mistakes. Even if he has to sometimes add to the meanness on the streets, like it or not.

While Snowball may think he’s found what he’s looking for, I suspect he’ll find getting out and living a quiet life isn’t such a simple proposition. At least I hope not. Or the next book in the series, Blind Moon Alley,  will be awfully dull.

Sugar Pop Moon is a good, solid noir novel. Florio puts just enough violence into his story to keep things interesting without overdoing it. Things move fast, and the characters are developed enough to come across as real people. One of the characters is the city of New York itself. There’s plenty of detail, in both the main story set in 1930 and the secondary plot in 1906, enough that the periods come to life, allowing the reader to have a glimpse into the past.

So if this type of thing is your literary drink, step up to the bar and pour yourself a shot of Sugar Pop Moon.

I’d like to thank Lisa Michalski from Seventh Street Books for the review copy.