I'm trying to get ideas for the best Mafia fiction books, other than The Godfather. I don't mean hoax books that are intended to be non-fiction, like The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano either, but real fiction books. So appreciate your ideas.

Have you read The Last Don also by Mario Puzo. Great book also..

I haven't read any fiction since I was in high school or college. I'm a non-fiction guy. So I wanted to see what the top Mafia and crime fiction books are out there beside The Godfather and start reading some. I recently picked up The Godfather, Omerta, Prizzi's Honor, A Darkness More than Night by Michael Connelly, Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard, The Racketeer by John Grisham, Robert B. Parker's A Debt to Pay by Reed Farrel Coleman, Hit Man by Lawrence Block, and The Firm by John Grisham.

Last Don Standing: The Secret Life of Mob Boss Ralph Natale

Must have read this book when the pb came out nearly 30 years ago. Still one of the best gangster books I've ever come across.
Out of print now but available second hand:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ride-Tiger-Novel-Harold-Livingston/dp/0688042910

The Last Don suffers from the same flaw as The Godfather. Too much Hollywood. It would be fine if Puzo didn't come off as so bitter. He hated Sinatra. It was obvious. Puzo's worship of old school Sicilian dons and his fantasizing over their pristine control of the underworld was a little annoying, too, and obviously out of touch with reality.

I'm just starting to get into mafia fiction, too (non Godfather, Puzo). Frankie Machine was meh. I've heard the Road To Perdition sequels have a lot of good stuff about the Outfit's reach into national politics. Grishams books really get into the midwest and southern mobs. The Firm has a different ending than the movie. James Elroy's "LA Quartet" has a lot about the LA mobs, Dragna and Coen.

I have The Last Don, Omerta and The Sicilian from Mario Puzo all on pdf if anyone wants them...

I just picked up The Last Don and Omerta. I noticed that The Godfather breaks a lot of current writing rules, so in a different era it might not have gotten published.

Thanks for the heads up on The Road to Perdition sequels. I will check those out. Oak, as far as quality writing, which ones do you think are the best?

Omerta is probably my favorite Puzo book. I'd hate to keep ragging on the guy (my inner Sinatra fan boy is showing), but I think I enjoyed Omerta more because it's shorter, as he wrote it while he was ill and probably rushed it to get it done. In my view, it probably made the book better. It gets right to the point. Not a bad tale of mob life in the '90s on the east coast, a good compliment to the success of the Sopranos at that time.

Have you read "The Road to Purgatory" by Max Allan Collins? If so, what's your opinion?

I enjoy mafia fiction sometimes more then non fiction bcuz I'm not fact checking it.

Here's some good ones....
Trinities (Forgot author name be also wrote King Of The Jews about Arnold rothstein.)

Live By Night by Dennis Lehane

CHARLIE STELLA wrote a few mafia books that are Elmore Leonard style

Blood Of Our Fathers (never read the sequel but this book was excellent)

All four of the Prizzi books were great.

CHINA WHITE by Peter Mass was good (triad book)

And several more I can't think of right now.