THE Don is back! Twenty-five years after The Godfather, Mario Puzo has written another larger-than-life Mafia tale, a story of murder, love and lust set in Las Vegas and Hollywood. This time it is the Clericuzio Family rather than those nice Corleones, but the opening is the familiar gathering at the Family compound on Long Island.

The occasion is a christening (perfect for the television mini-series: CBS has bought the rights for $2 million). It is just one year after the most savage act of retribution in which the Clericuzio wiped out their long-term enemies, the Santadios.

The head of the Clericuzios, Don Domenico, has decided that it is time to go clean. His grandchildren must not be tarred with the criminal image of the Mafia. They will merge into the great American society, enjoying the benefits and rewards which their predecessors had to fight for.

At 80 he is getting a little crusty, but is still in control. After 25 years his dream was coming true. Gambling was now respectable and increasingly legal. The family already had a handle on the management companies that ran the state lotteries and knew from their takings that the percentages were high. But the Don was banking on the day when gambling on sports would be legal right across America, as it was now legal only in Nevada.

Profits on the Super Bowl game alone would come to $1 billion in one day. The Clericuzios would be the equal of the Renaissance princes. They would become the patrons of art, advisers and leaders of government, respectable in history books. His descendants, his followers and friends would be secure forever.

But there are dark secrets in the history of the Clericuzio family, seeds of evil sown by the Don himself, evil that pits Cross de Lena, son of the family's top hitman, against the Don's own beloved grandson, Dante Clericuzio, who has such a brutal appetite for murder that within the family they say that he has "a bloody mouth". And for all the Don's aspirations to grandeur and respectability, killing is still what the Clericuzios do best, whether it is a "Confirmation" - the body is left for all to see - or a "Communion" - the victim goes dancing at the bottom of the sea.

The Don's nephew Pippi may have bought a temporary peace with his destruction of the Santadios, but at a price which he must eventually pay. De Lena is the family bruglione, or baron, in Las Vegas; he and his son Cross are the real power behind the luxurious Xanadu Hotel and Casino, playground for leading politicians and all those who might need to be bought off.

For in the code of the Clericuzios, everyone has their price, especially the White House. Power and money can make you safe from everything - except, perhaps, a beautiful woman. So what happens when Cross falls in love with the lovely Athena, the top bankable star at Lode Stone Studios and decides to have a shot at becoming a big Hollywood player? Can he go against the Don, break all the family rules and risk his destruction? How much blood must be shed before he breaks the mould and is really free?

Puzo weaves a complex and fascinating plot of intrigue and murder in which there is more honour among sharks than society stalwarts. As an old screenwriter he is at his best in his caricatures of Hollywood, where writers are clearly at the bottom of the pile. He even has one scriptwriter kill himself in order to get paid; at least his family would collect.

This is an old-fashioned story about an old-style Mafia that still sends them back to Sicily when things get too hot in the US. Puzo is using the same formula that made The Godfather a bestseller. But at 75, he has lost none of his verbal wizardry in close to 500 pages of dazzling entertainment

His characters are thin but they speak a street smart lingo, peppered with slick Puzoisms; of these, my favourite, which should be on every writer's desk, is: "Actions define a man. Words are a fart in the Wind." Bill Maxwell is a freelance writer on the arts and travel {CORRECTION} 96092600100