This was a book sale find in 2024 but sat on my shelf along with my collection of the other O'Reilly Killing books until September 2025 when I needed something to read. 273 pages through the postscripts. I read through this in 8 days, my evening entertainment. Just like all the other Killing series books, it is excellent. Well researched, well written, informative and fascinating.
Perhaps because I grew up in a small town in southwestern PA with definite mob connections, mob families, sometimes called "Little Chicago." The mob families I knew about were nice people to us, the streets of the town were safe to walk at all hours. They delivered boxes of groceries to doorsteps of people who were needy, anonymously. They heavily financed and rebuilt an exquisite the Italian Catholic church in the town, still a beauty today. There was a rumor that at one time the priest of the church hid a mobster whom the feds were looking for. Most of us had no fear of them whatsoever. I suppose they were criminals but whatever crimes they were involved in did not seem to bother the town.
The book opens in 1934 with t a prologue about John Dillinger and goes up through present day in New York City culminating with a reference that our President Trump needed concrete and waste management to build the Trump Towers and negotiated with the mob for these.
The book chronicles J Edgar Hoover's obsession with organized crime families, political influences and how at times even the government dealt with the mob families. There is no revelation about what happened to Jimmy Hoffa whose remains remain disappeared. Of great interest is the story of Donnie Brasco who in fact was an undercover FBI agent, Joseph Pistone. As Donnie Brasco he infiltrated posing as a small time jewel thief and became a trusted part of the Bonanno crime family where he was deep undercover for 5 years beginning September 1976. He becomes the FBI's star key witness in the prosecutions, the Mob placed a $500,000 bounty on his head.
No comments:
Post a Comment