Road to Paradise (2005)

In the cliché-packed conclusion of the gory trilogy that began with Road to Perdition, Max Allan Collins continues the biography of Michael Satariano. (He was Tom Hanks' son in the 2002 film.) At 50, Michael — an upstanding family man with a ''wolf-whistle-worthy'' wife and a casino job for the Mob — is framed for the murder of a barbaric Chicago loan shark. Ready to break his lifelong connection to organized crime, Michael turns state's evidence. If you've ever wondered how the Witness Protection Program's security can be breached, Road to Paradise offers one possibility. The results are grisly — an ostensibly sympathetic main character is ''slashed to ribbons'' while sleeping — but what's more appalling is how little the reader will care.