*Mario Puzo won international acclaim for The Godfather and his
other Mafia novels. But before creating those masterpieces, Puzo wrote
his first acclaimed novel The Dark Arena-an astounding story of a
war-scarred young American in a battle against corruption and betrayal.
. . .
After coming home at the end of World War II, Walter Mosca finds himself
too restless for his civilian role in America. So he returns to Germany
to find the woman he had once loved-and to start some kind of life in a
vanquished country. But ahead of Walter stretches a dark landscape of
defeat and intrigue, as he succumbs to the corrupting influences of a
malevolent time. Now he enters a different kind of war, one in which he
must make a fateful decision-between love and ambition, passion and
greed, life and death. . . .