On this day in 1999 we saw the death of one of the biggest Mafia novelist and screenwriters of the 20th century, Mario Puzo. He was born to a poor family in 1920, in Hell’s Kitchen. He died aged 78 in West Bay Shore. You are probably already aware of the name from The Godfather novel which went on to be co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970’s. He also wrote The Sicilian, The Last Don, and Omertà.

On this day in 1999, the world of crime fiction lost one of its most gifted storytellers, as Mario Puzo passed away at his home in West Bay Shore, Long Island, aged 78. Though he never ran with the mob himself, Puzo did more to shape the public's understanding of organised crime than almost any journalist, law enforcement figure, or academic of the 20th century. His words gave the American Mafia a mythology that endures to this day.

Born on 15th October 1920 to Neapolitan immigrant parents, Puzo grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of Manhattan, a notoriously rough stretch of New York City that served as fertile ground for street gangs and small-time criminals. It was here, surrounded by poverty and the raw realities of immigrant life, that Puzo developed an acute eye for the social forces that drove men toward crime. He was largely self-educated, devouring literature and history before eventually serving in the Second World War and later studying at Columbia University.

His early novels received modest critical attention but little commercial success, leaving Puzo in considerable debt by his mid-forties. It was out of financial desperation, by his own frank admission, that he set about writing a sweeping saga of an Italian-American crime dynasty. The result, published in 1969, was The Godfather. The novel spent 67 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over 21 million copies in its first year alone. Puzo drew inspiration from the real world of the American Mafia, and sharp-eyed readers familiar with mob history will recognise echoes of figures such as Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Carlo Gambino woven into the fabric of his fictional Corleone family and the rivalries of the Five Families.

His collaboration with director Francis Ford Coppola produced two of the most celebrated films in cinema history, with The Godfather in 1972 and The Godfather Part II in 1974 both winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Puzo shared the screenplay Oscar for both films. He went on to write further mob-themed novels including The Sicilian, The Last Don, and Omertà, the latter published just a year before his death and dealing with the very code of silence that had long governed the underworld he so brilliantly chronicled.

Mario Puzo never glamourised the Mafia without consequence, but he understood its brutal appeal better than almost anyone. His legacy is a body of work that continues to introduce new generations to the complex, violent, and deeply human world of organised crime.