SOURCE: "Condon Still Waiting with 'Prizzi' Prequel," in Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1987, p. C37.

In the following essay, Mann relates the difficulties of transforming Condon's novels into screenplays

Because his novel Prizzi's Honor was such a success, both as a book and a movie, Richard Condon finished his follow-up book Prizzi's Family confident that the phone soon would ring with Hollywood offers.

They didn't come.

And now, almost a year since hardcover publication and with the paperback on sale, the book still has not been picked up.

Condon is mystified.

"There've been no overtures at all," he said the other afternoon on a visit to Los Angeles from his Dallas home. "Very surprising."

Prizzi's Family is a prequel to Prizzi's Honor in which Condon fills in the background to the people involved in this organized-crime story. In it Charley Partanna, the hit man played so splendidly by Jack...