Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

 When I think of Lisa Scottoline, her legal thrillers set in Philadelphia come to mind. This is a legal thriller of a different sort, set in Sicily at an unnamed year in the past. The book mostly revolves around the rise of the mafia in Sicily, which started in the lemon-growing industry. The lawyer, Gaetano, comes in when a small boy is kidnapped off the street during a religious festival. Gaetano feels compelled to find the missing boy, sacrificing his job, his family life, and eventually his freedom in the process. He is definitely the most admirable character in this book full of cruel and ruthless characters. Other subplots involve a feisty albino girl (who is shunned as a witch) and a cheese maker who is a secret Jew, possibly the only one left in Sicily. By the end, Scottoline manages to tie all the disparate plots together and it made for an interesting tale.