mafia

Law and Law with some Order

The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster by John Gleeson

May 25, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

There’s an overabundance of text written about John Gotti, which is kind of wild when one considers he reigned as the head of the Gambino Crime Family for barely five years. Hell, the man was even one of the last subjects of Andy Warhol’s legendary career. His bombastic, publicity-hunting personality made him the most compelling mobster in the public eye since Al Capone but if you subtract that context, he was an uninspiring thug in a bureaucrat’s job (albeit the bureaucracy of a criminal syndicate) […]

Atlantic Pity

Mafia Prince by Phil Leonetti

May 15, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

To continue the Mafia kick I’ve been on lately, I checked out the Mafia subreddit for book recommendations. To a person, the guys on that site thought Mafia Prince, a book I had never heard of, was one of the best, if not THE best read on La Cosa Nostra in the United States. I thought I had heard of all the major mafia books but this one completely escaped me. I’m sure this is in part because my interest in Mafia tales is more on […]

The Books of Greenwich Village

Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mob Boss Chin Gigante by Larry McShane

69 Barrow Street/Strange Embrace by Lawrence Block

The Pope of Greenwich Village by Vincent Patrick

May 11, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

Unintentionally so, I read three consecutive books set in Greenwich Village (well, I guess technically three out of four as one of the books is a two-for-one and the second story isn’t set in the Village). I decided to cobble together one review of the stories since they shared this similarity… Chin *** When I’d first heard of Chin Gigante, I was more fascinated with the idea that the mob had a thriving operation in Greenwich Village, an area I’ve always associated with Bohemians and the […]

Corona Days

Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese

Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost

May 8, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

After two-plus years of successfully evading the coronavirus, it finally caught up to me last week. Fortunately, my symptoms were mild (vaccinated and boosted), the only one lingering was fatigue. That and family responsibilities left me little time to write reviews this past week. So I decided to put these three here instead of my monthly dump because they were all worthy of longer reviews, two good, one damn fine. Honor Thy Father **** One of the things that made The Sopranos such an excellent television […]

GoodFemmella

Mob Girl: A Woman's Life in the Underworld by Teresa Carpenter

May 1, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

I’ve been meaning to read this for a few years, ever since I heard it would be made into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. But I put it off after a while because the reviews for the book itself weren’t great and the movie seems to have stalled (it was announced back in 2019 but I’m guessing Covid and/or Lawrence’s pregnancy have changed things). Anyway, since I’m on a mob kick, I decided to finally pick it up and I’m […]

April 2022 Leftovers

Batman, Volume 3: Death in the Family by Scott Snyder

DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1 by Darwyn Cooke

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Gordon Murphy

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year-Secret City by Scott Snyder

Chances by Jackie Collins

Batgirl, Volume 1: Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year-Dark City by Scott Snyder

Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John "Sonny" Franzeze by S.J. Peddie

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman

Call Me a Cab by Donald Westlake

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen

The Bouncer by David Gordon

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen

Concourse by S.J. Rozan