It’s cold, still dark early, a time, as the cliché has it, to curl up with a good book. And I’ve got one for you, if “good” means almost non-stop reading because you care about the main characters, even if they’re not good. And they’re not, in Anthony Schneider’s new novel, “Lowdown.” They’re Mafia, but as “The Godfather” and Tony Soprano proved, complex goodfellas can fascinate. In “Lowdown” Schneider delivers an absorbing tale about a guy whose crime family has real-life connections to the Gambinos and John Gotti. Yes, there’s violence, but there’s also a love story here, that’s not only believable but heartwarming. What’s more, Schneider shows he can not only do blunt action prose, but such lyrically evocative descriptions – medieval houses and streets, people, wine and food – that he could easily be accused of being a shill for Sicily’s tourist industry. The narrative proceeds as alternating time zone chapters, beginning in 2006 in the present tense. The going back and forth, past