I think any publisher in the world would publish anything that Stephen King writes, no matter what the genre. Bottom line is, if SK wanted to write TGR, SK would have written it.

Anyhow, Puzo wasn't a mafia writer before he wrote the Godfather, so a mafia author wouldn't need to be chosen to write TGR. I wouldn't really consider MW to be a mafia writer either. He just writes books about Cleveland and unnecessarily tied Cleveland into TGR too much.

I don't blame Random House for picking MW, they thought he was the best guy for the job with the best story (even though I and millions will disagree) and they did their best. It failed. They didn't make as much money as they hoped and the readers didn't get the story they wanted. Not a big deal. I'm glad I was able to revisit the GF universe one more time (even though it could have been better) and I've moved on. I'm not going to launch a campaign to have MW wacked or anything, but I do wish the book was better and I feel that someone else could have done a better job. We'll never know, so oh well.