Johnny Porno

A New York Tale of the Streets

Set in the New York City of 1973, Charlie Stella?s ?Johnny Porno? is a crime story of low life and the mob and the attempt to get by with one?s life. The book centers around ?Deep Throat?, starring Linda Lovelace, which became the first pornographic movie to achieve widespread notoriety. The movie went underground in New York after a judge declared it obscene, thus helping the mob, which had bankrolled the venture, to reap enormous profits in underground viewings and related scams.

The hero of this novel, John Albano, is known as Johnny Porno because he works on the weekends as a runner distributing ?Deep Throat? for the mob. His predecessor as a runner, known as Tommy Porno, had met a violent end for skimming receipts. John Albano hates his nickname and has never seen the film. He takes the job because he needs to make ends meet. With a sharp temper, Albano has recently punched out a corrupt police office and lost his job as a carpenter. He has child support payments to meet to his wife Nancy. Nancy had been married once before to a man named Louis whom she continues to see and is married for a third time to Nathan, a classical musician. Albano has long lacked female companionship and begins a promising relationship with Melinda, a waitress. As the novel progresses, he becomes more deeply drawn into the world of the mob and of porn.

The book is replete with characters from the mob, centering around Eddie Vento, the highest person in the organization that figures in the story. The reader sees from the inside the world of Vento, his henchmen, together with associated loan sharks, thugs, and mistresses. The book also includes a variety of police characters, some legitimate and some in the pay of the mob. Frequently it is difficult to tell which is which. John Albano, who simply wants to do his job, distribute the film, and be done with it, makes enemies, some who see him as an easy mark, some as a scapegoat, and some as a subject for a personal vendetta. The book is filled with double crosses and triple crosses as Albano?s enemies work against him and against each other. The book emphasizes the crasser parts of human nature together with some examples of decency and honesty.

The novel is heavily and perhaps too intricately plotted. The story lines unfold in short chapters, each of which include brief sections which switch from one set of characters to another. Some of the specifics are difficult to follow. Ultimately the story lines tie together. The dialogue is streetwise and tough and the many characters are sharply portrayed. The book is made by its atmosphere with the bars, shoddy restaurants, the streets, and the roads. It is thick with the mob and with the seediness of porn and those who watch it and those who are engaged in it. The book held my interest and kept me going to its conclusion. I wanted to see the seemingly hapless Johnny Porno succeed.

?Johnny Porno? is Charlie Stella?s seventh published novel and the first with a historical setting. Stella wrote the introduction to this novel in which he describes his writing experiences and the course of his life which, for a time, gave him first-hand experience with the types of characters and activities he describes. As a student, Stella learned the lesson that ?Once you see your name in print, you?ll always want it there?; which has served him well as he pursued his dreams of becoming a writer. I enjoyed reading this modern, gritty example of a crime genre novel.