Robert De Niro's production company has bought the film rights to the book with De Niro attached to produce and star in the movie. Frank Machianno, an affable, funny, middle-aged Italian with a love of people and life, has his own life turned upside down when his past revisits him in the form of a wise-assed kid who knows that Frank was once ?Frankie Machine, ? the most feared hit man on the West Coast. The story unfolds with headlong speed, fierce, funny, and at times violent but always a compelling page turner.