Omerta, Mario Puzo Omerta, Mario Puzo, newyourk: ballantine books, , p Omertà is a novel by Mario Puzo, published posthumously in To Don Raymonde Aprile's children he was a loyal family member, their father's adopted "nephew." To the FBI he was a man who would rather ride his horses than do Mob business/5(). Puzo was born in a poor family of Neapolitan immigrants living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II/5. Puzo never saw the publication of Omertà, but the manuscript was finished before his death, as was the manuscript for The Family. In a review originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules Siegel, who had worked closely with Puzo at Magazine Management Company, speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless Author: Mario Puzo.