«Potsdamer Platz» by Buddy Giovinazzo

'Not since Goodfellas has there been such a brilliant and unique look into the gangster world' — Tony Scott
A New York Mafia crime family, known as the Franchise, sets up base on the biggest construction site in Europe, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, setting in train a destructive confrontation with the Russian Mafia. Tony, the youngest hit-man in the history of the Franchise, is sent in first, to terrorise and soften up the opposition, which he does with catastrophic results when an innocent 14 year old girl is killed. Feeling guilt and shame over a life spent destroying everything he's ever laid his hands on, Tony decides to change his life, especially after he falls in love with Monica, a medical student from East Berlin. But he finds changing his life of violence and cruelty nearly impossible to do. Torn between his loyalty to the Franchise, his only family, and his feelings of love for Monica and the redemption she can offer, Tony tries to balance a life in both worlds, the criminal and the scarier world of normal life; with tragically mixed results.
Action-packed, sexy and filmic, Potsdamer Platz reveals the dark and threatening world of contemporary Berlin after the wall came down — a city of two halves flooded with new money and in the throes of economic transformation, ripe with opportunity for the forces of organised crime.