A tough and refreshingly unsentimental overview of what is essentially the end of the American Mafia.
The man who went undercover as Donnie Brasco acts as tour guide to the downfall of the New York Mafia: a long-coming event he was instrumental in bringing about.
To hear former FBI agent Pistone (Donnie Brasco, not reviewed) put it, his dangerous, six-year undercover operation in the New York Mob couldn’t have happened before or since. Prior to the early-’70s, the Hooverite agency was still too suspicious of the whole (then-)unconventional idea, and after 1981, when Pistone began delivering reams of damning testimony in one RICO case after another, the fatally wounded families became even more suspicious of outsiders. Still living in an undisclosed location and having knocked out a few crime novels in the past few years—apparently, he left the Feds before getting that pension—Pistone now gives the full scoop on the aftermath of his years undercover, and how the work he began essentially demolished New York’s five families. The going will be a bit rough at first for those unfamiliar with Donnie Brasco; readers may find themselves lost in details (was that the Lucchese or Bonanno family? Is that Sonny Red or Sonny Black?). But Pistone proves to be a smart and pugnacious writer, unafraid to repeat himself where necessary, and none too worried about offending targets of ridicule; the latter category includes clueless FBI supervisors, a Mafia composed of bumbling and sadistic sociopaths and the Godfather-loving clueless who romanticize them. An epilogue lists the Mafiosi Pistone associated with while undercover and who have since been whacked, many because of their association with him—there are 15 names.
A tough and refreshingly unsentimental overview of what is essentially the end of the American Mafia.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7624-2707-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
A blistering jeremiad that gives new vibrancy to the political clichÇ that Washington is out of touch with the average American. At first glance, it would seem that any book rehashing this idea, even calling for a Jeffersonian-style electoral revolution, is hardly onto anything new. But Phillips (The Politics of Rich and Poor, 1990) is a brilliant reader of the political tea leaves; this seasoned Washington observer more than compensates for boiler-plate populism with a steady accretion of detail and provocative historical comparisons. For instance, he not only notes how parasitic the Beltway has become, but catalogues it with alarming data: the capital is overrun, he states, by 40,00050,000 lawyers, 90,000 lobbyists, a Congressional staff of 20,000, and 12,000 journalists. Phillips also finds novel examples of ``the capital's intermingling of public service, loose money, vocational incest, overinflated salaries, and ethical flexibility.'' One instance is what he calls ``loophole nepotism,'' the congressional practice of putting relatives on a colleague's payroll. Former assets of the American tradition have become liabilities, he thinks, including a separation of powers that discourages cooperation and responsibility, and a labyrinthine framework with 83,000 state, county, and city government subdivisions. Moreover, the government's inability to regulate electronic financial speculation has exposed the middle class to the decline of the manufacturing sector and even white-collar downsizing. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to reform the mess since they feed at the special-interest trough. Phillips draws useful parallels with three capitals once afflicted with unproductive hangers-on: Madrid in the 1590s, the Hague in the 1690s, and London in the 1890s. He calls for reform measures ranging from the quixotic (periodically moving Congress out of the capital) to the sensible (the elimination of incentives for lawyers and lobbyists). Unusually wise to the dodges of Washington's rich and powerful. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-70618-3
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Retired FBI agent Ressler, who again teams up with Schactman (Whoever Fights Monsters, 1992), reveals here that modern American justice is served very, very slowly. When Ressler moved to the Cleveland office in 1974, he was handed an ``old dog,'' FBI slang for a hard case to close. Cleveland's king of X-rated motels, Owen Kilbane, was suspected of violating racketeering laws by moving his prostitutes between states. But Ressler was less interested in the prostitution ring than in Kilbane's lawyer, Robert Steele. Five years earlier, Steele's wife had been shot dead in her suburban home while she slept. Almost immediately, the police had suspected Steele, then a prominent judge who'd been having an affair and was known to have inquired about finding someone to murder his wife. Steele resigned from the bench when details of his adultery emerged, but no witnesses came forward, and because of a celebrated case in which the conviction of a doctor for killing his wife had recently been overturned on appeal, the police hesitated to push for an indictment without iron-clad evidence. Gradually, Ressler gathered information about Kilbane's criminal activities and cultivated informants. With tips from disgruntled prostitutes and a confession from the shooter, who was jailed for another murder, Ressler built a case. After three years of dogged pursuit, Kilbane and his brother Martin, as well as Steele were convicted of arranging Marlene Steele's murder. The problem here is that, while Ressler's detailed account of his pursuit is the sign of a dedicated agent, it's not necessarily the sign of a good writer. This reads like a case file—a litany of details spiced with pinches of bravado but without any real surprises. The moral of this true crime tale is, if there's a will, there's a way, which may be needed encouragement for readers plowing through Justice Is Served.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11295-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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