MY LIFE IN THE MAFIA

by Vincent & Thomas L. Renner Teresa ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1973

Ever since Robert Kennedy forced the Mafia into the light of day, we have had these memoirs -- real and fictional -- of the soldiers and the generals and the godfathers of this ancient secret society sworn to crime-capitalism. Vincent Teresa's story, told here without flinching or unmanly skulking (he's testified before, as you know), does not differ materially from the run-of-the-kill genre -- there are the contracts, there are the family loyalties, there are the names (if you want names -- read this book), there are the hushed calls to trusted compatriots (?) to map concrete procedures for dealing with recalcitrant enemies (? -- don't ask, do it), there are more dollars passed than greaseballs around to collect them. Most of this is in the words of fat (350 lbs.), New England (Boston and area), ex-Mafioso Teresa who was once a big fish -- Valachi was only a trooper -- in the higherarchy of the operative syndicate, a third-generation practitioner-turned-stoolie (Teresa's now hiding from the mob somewhere maybe in Virginia or maybe Michigan) whose exhumation of crime in America is an unrelenting tape of whom and what ill-got money will and could and did buy. There's nothing here which will curl Hank Messick's notebook -- the kiss of dearth -- but the average neophyte to this sort of sordid business will find it, well, engulfing.

Pub Date: March 9, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION