Book Review - Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone

 Donnie Brasco: My Underecover Life in the Mafia - a true story by Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley

London: Hodder, 2006                                                                     ISBN 9780340922651

A good read. I had thought that I had watched the movie based on this book, but after reading the book, now I'm not so sure....(maybe I'm thinking of Goodfellas...). Brasco/Pistone was the first FBI agent to go deep undercover, and so this book is very much the first of its genre. What makes this different from some other books is that this is actually true, (ghost) written from the first person perspective, and as such a real insight into the American Mafia as it existed in the 1970s. Up until Pistone's entree, FBI agents only went undercover to expose specific crimes: Pistone spent six years infiltrating the Mafia, finally being pulled out of his role just before he was about to become a made man.

The interest in this book is the insight it gives into the Mafia - how it worked, who worked for whom, what sort of things they got up to, and really just how boring most of the lives of "wiseguys" were. Pistone originally connects with some very small time crooks before he manages to hook up with some wiseguys from the Bonanno crime family, especially Lefty Ruggiero and Sonny Napolitano.

The book catalogues the continual efforts to score cash, from a few dollars selling fake Rolexes, robbery, betting, loan-sharking, and drugs. Everything they do is focused on the next score, whatever it might be. While there is always the threat of violence in everything they do, it is rarely doled out. In fact what comes through in this book is how much politics rules what goes on. There are so many rules about who can do what, who can speak to whom, and how territories and scams get divided up. Also of interest is how the money worked - the captains took a cut of everything their underlings were involved in. Honour among thieves is a concept that seems to run the Mafia, but Pistone shows us how each member tried as much as possible to scam those above them by under-reporting their earnings, even though the consequences for being found out were deadly.

The book contains many transcripts of conversations between Pistone and various wiseguys, and they well illustrate the intricate nature of relationships between made men, and just how easy it was for anyone to mis-step, which could bring serious consequences.

Being undercover for six years is a huge sacrifice, which Pistone briefly touches on, and the danger to himself and his family is mentioned, but not emphasized. He points out toward the end of the book that his activities would have consequences for the wiseguys that he worked with, wiseguys that in some cases he had come to like. Pistone's strength of character and quick thinking helped him immensely in his task.

As the Bonanno family "war" gathered pace, it was deemed too dangerous for Pistone to continue, and there is a short afterword about what happened to some of his wiseguy associates, and how Pistone's life and family changed owing to the work he had done.

If you are a person with an interest in Mafia history and activities, this is well-worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, translated from the Italian by Virginia Jewiss

London: Macmillan, 2007             ISBN 9780230703674

This book is a personal cry of rage, a fulfilment of a vendetta in words. After 300 pages of clinical and highly readable description of how the Camorra not only kill, but corrupt and pollute Italy's land and people, Roberto Saviano screams "Hey, you bastards, I'm still here!".

While it is the Mafia that have received most of the press over the years, it is the Camorra that was the most active criminal entity in Italy in the ten years before Saviano wrote this book. A native of Naples, Saviano finds himself drawn to document not only the activities of the Camorra, but it's effect on his hometown and its people.

He describes in detail how the Camorra clans became involved not only in drugs, illegal rubbish dumping and counterfeit fashion: he shows us that they also engage in "legitimate" business - the same sweatshops that produce the counterfeits also make the real stuff! The clans get these legitimate contracts via criminal means, by forcing competitors out of business or often by controlling the logistics chain so that they can do things more cheaply than anyone else.

Saviano makes clear through the book how young men (and women) get drawn into the clans: "These same regions [Campania, Sicily, Calabria] head the list for the largest criminal associations, the highest unemployment rate, and the greatest number of volunteers for the military and the police forces." The feeling of power that comes with being a member of a clan is something, even if it is often also a death sentence.

And what of Camorra power? Saviano notes that no clan lasts as a power for more than ten years or so; they either get destroyed by the police, or a beaten in a war by another clan. Often the capos spend their lives on the run or in hiding, so they rarely get to enjoy the massive amounts of cash they generate. It is the power, the respect they get from their position , that is the most important to them. In Campania, to be a Camorrista is to be someone, On several occasions in this book, Saviano is asked by people he knows why he doesn't join the clans, as his intelligence would be an asset - there is no moral difference to some local people between the clans and other professions.

As in the rest of Southern Italy, what people say, who they say it to, and how it is said is important. Saviano shows us how the Camorra uses murder to besmirch innocent people, and people who speak out against the clans - if someone is executed by a clan the automatic inference is that they must have been guilty of something. So not only are the clans omnipotent, they are infallible.

Saviano's rage, like the rage of most people who are opposed to Italian organised crime, is also directed at the government, which, time and time again, fails in its duty to the people. Quite often this is because those in government are part of, or compromised by, the Camorra. There seems to be no way to permanently break this nexus of evil.

Gomorrah was a bestseller in its native land, and across the World. While it shone a light on the inner workings of the Camorra, it did little to change what goes on. Saviano became a marked man, and has lived under police protection since he wrote this book.

As an armchair consumer of books on Italian organised crime, I can recommend Gomorrah as an excellent work, and well worth reading.



Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The wine-dark sea by Leonardo Sciascia

The wine-dark sea by Leonardo Sciascia, translated by Avril Bardoni, Introduction by Albert Mobilio

New York: New York Review Books, 2000       ISBN 0940322536

In an author's note at the end of this collection, Sciascia writes "These short stories were written - together with a few more that seemed to me not worth collecting and reissuing - between 1959 and 1972." He goes on to write that this collection came about owing to requests from his readers, who wished to have the stories collected into one volume.

And what a great little volume it is - stories that give us the flavour of Sicily in bite-sized pieces. Some of these stories are a moment in time extrapolated to show the nature of a place: Philology for example, where a discussion about the origins of a word (mafia) tell us in ten pages what the Mafia is, how it works, and how it continues to thrive in Sicily. Some stories speak of the clash of cultures, such as The test where a Swiss businessman cannot grasp what he is being "told" by his Sicilian counterparts, because the Sicilian way is to talk in metaphor around an issue, rather than with the Teutonic directness of their Northern neighbours. Many stories are about love, and how families can come to regret thwarting true love when it is deemed not to their benefit, even when the payoff can be years later, as in The ransom.

All of the stories are human stories, stories of love, of revenge, of stupidity and avarice. The are all written in the spare, ironic style that Sciascia is known for, which leaves the reader thinking.

Well worth dipping into.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Day of the Owl / Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia

The day of the owl / equal danger by Leonardo Sciascia, with an afterword by Frank Kermode

Manchester: Carcanet, 1984                           ISBN 0856355666

Sicily is a unique place, historically, geographically, and socially. Those three aspects have intertwined to give the world some of the most horrible (mafia) and wonderful (cuisine) things. It has also given us some very good writers over the years, Leonardo Sciascia being one of them.

What he writes about in these two novellas is a state of mind, a culture, that is Sicilian. Nothing is as it seems, and the honest man is at a disadvantage not necessarily because he is honest or principled, but because no-one else can believe that he can be honest and principled.

In both these novellas, the main protagonist is a detective who is investigating multiple murders, and in both stories the detective is the only person involved who is disinterestedly searching for the truth of the matter.

What Sciascia lays bare in both books is the workings of the mafia system, which pervades all layers of society, including the pillars of the law. Both the mafia and the judicial system have their own mores, and those that don't fit in are excluded, via exile or the dreaded lupara. Bellodi, the police captain investigating the murder of a businessman in The day of the owl, causes much consternation because he doesn't follow the "script" - the police want the easy way out and a quick conviction, regardless of the facts, and those politicians in Rome that help the mafia become more and more concerned as Bellodi's investigation begins to get too close to home. As the story unfolds we see that Bellodi has cleverly got to the truth, but, being a "mainlander" and not well-versed in the ways of Sicily, we see his work fall apart through the machinations of those higher than him, and the story ends with him back in Parma as his case dies, yet he is determined to return to the island "Even if it's the end of me.".

In Equal danger Inspector Rogas has a very illuminating discussion with the President of the Supreme Court, where the President espouses the view that judges can by definition never be wrong: like priests delivering communion no matter how flawed, the fact that justice has been dispensed makes it right. This, well into a story where state powers are doing everything to move the investigation of the murders of several lawyers and judges in the direction that they want it to take to fulfill their pre-arranged narrative.

"But Rogas had principles, in a country where almost no one did." Those principles lead Rogas to investigate these crimes based on the facts, rather than pre-suppositions. What the reader sees in Equal danger is how power can subsume those with principles, and eventually drive them mad.

So these are "detective novels" with a difference. The social comment is severe, yet ironic and elusive, two factors heightened by the cryptic author's notes at the end of each work. It is the language - even in translation - that is the highlight of Sciascia's writing: his desriptions of the sere, bare landscape and people, the allusive language of hint, metaphor and suggestion, all add to the sense of foreboding and inevitable failure that hangs over the protagonists of these stories.

Sciascia has an excellent reputation, and reading these it's easy to see why.

Recommended.





Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Underboss by Peter Maas

Underboss : Sammy the Bull Gravano's story of life in the mafia by Peter Maas

New York: Harper Collins, 1997                                ISBN 0060182563


It took most of a lifetime for Sam Gravano to work out what most of us learn more quickly - that criminals are not to be trusted, are not nice people, and that greed is usually their downfall. In this fascinating account - based on many hours of taped conversations with Gravano - Peter Maas shows us how the Gambino crime family operated in New York during the 1970s through to the early 1990s.

In many ways Gravano's early life was that of an archetypal gangster: growing up on the mean streets of Bensonhurst, the dyslexic Gravano did not do well at school and after a short time in the army took up with a street gang.

While Gravano is the first to say he wasn't an educated man, he was not stupid, and soon realised that if he wanted to ever become more than a street punk he needed to ally himself with the local Cosa Nostra crew.

The book is a simple re-telling of his adventures in crime, including the murders, betrayals, stand-over tactics, scheming and all that goes with being a made man in the mafia.

A good portion of the book is taken up with Gravano's dealings with Paul Castellano and John Gotti. Gravano was involved in the murder of Castellano, and eventually turned states witness against Gotti.

Gravano saw himself as an old school mafioso, avoiding publicity, and living a relatively modest life. He grew increasingly disgusted with Castellano's distance from the on-the-ground workings of his crew, and at Gotti's public displays of wealth.

Maas does a good job of making sense of all the ins and outs of the alliances and enmities between and within families, which makes this book an easy read.

There is much in here that is not surprising - the lack of self-awareness and empathy of these gangsters for example. What is more interesting are the descriptions of how Gravano and his crew went about planning operations, and how the byzantine workings of Cosa Nostra played out on a day-to-day basis.

If you have an interest in organized crime and its history, this book is well worth reading.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Mafia brotherhoods by John Dickie

Mafia brotherhoods : Camorra, mafia, 'ndrangheta: the rise of the Honoured Societies by John Dickie

London: Sceptre, 2012.                         ISBN 9780340963944

As any reader of my blog may have surmised, Italian organized crime is a reading interest of mine. I've reviewed both Midnight in Sicily and Mafia Republic in the last couple of years; the latter work also by Dickie, covering the history of organized crime in Italy since World War Two. Mafia brotherhoods is Dickie's history of the three main criminal societies from their birth up until the War. It is a highly engaging book, packed with incident and characters, based on sound scholarship.

Dickie explains that of the three societies he deals with, it was the Neapolitan Camorra which appeared first, in the prison network - the prisoners ran the jails, and the Camorra controlled where you slept, what you ate and wore, all for an appropriate fee. Dickie explains that the upheavals that occurred during the Risorgimento that allowed the Camorra and Cosa Nostra to enmesh themselves in the outside world. All three societies major crime was that of running protection rackets, with the Camorra also engaging in pimping.

It was Cosa Nostra in Sicily who were the first to realise the importance of entwining themselves with the forces of government for their own protection, and had a better idea of when to keep their heads down. In Naples, the different structure of the Camorra led to it being more exposed to law and order activities. Meanwhile, back in Calabria, the 'ndrangheta learnt a thing or two from jail time spent with other mafiosi, and set up a society that in some ways was more rigid than the other two.

Dickie builds his narrative around stories of law enforcement and trial transcripts, which lead the reader to ask themselves two questions. The first is why it has taken Italy so long to come to grips with these criminals when right from the earliest times the powers of law gathered enough information to know a lot about these groups: how they were structured, the crimes they committed, even on occasions their member's identities. It is clear from Dickie's history that the various mafia societies pulled in their favours, and at times lay low for a time, as they knew the body politic would soon move on. They also assiduously fostered the myths about the mafia; that it was a way of looking at life rather than an organized criminal syndicate, or that it was a product of prejudiced Northern Italian imaginations.

What is harder to grasp is why the state so quickly forgot what it found out, often at great cost. Did they just not see it as important, or could they not bear to face the truth of the cancer at the heart of their state? Or was it something more insidious?

As the citizen of a country that has a fine tradition of British law, I found Dickie's reference to trials interesting. Obviously Italy's legal system is different, but Dickie's continued reference to historians happening on trial transcripts, or of them being non-existant, seems odd, and disturbing. These trials all occurred less than 150 years ago, and many of them after World War One. It seems amazing that there is no index of cases or some other device for the judiciary to see what's gone on before. So, rather then building a body of knowledge about the mafia, the legal system started from scratch each time - Dickie describes the depressing detail that the diagram of the mafia that was proudly shown to the world in 1992 during the trial initiated by Tomaso Buscetta's confession was identical to a diagram included in a 1938 report prepared by the Fascist government. The continual change of governments after World War Two did not help in the task of keeping pressure to bear on these groups. As Dickie points out, while crime-fighting was a tactic of various governments, mafia societies have a long term strategy, which put them in a position to defeat whatever cane against them.

It seems that the glory years of the mafia finally may have passed, with the Italian and other governments finally taking a long-term view of the problem, and disrupting these societies more regularly and more successfully in recent years. Taken together, Dickie's books (which also include Cosa Nostra), provide the reader with a comprehensive history of the mafia in Italy.

Recommended

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb

Sydney : Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996                                      ISBN 187598920X


Re-reading books can be a fraught business - the impression a book has on a reader can be a combination of the content of the book, the time and place it was read, the state of the reader's mind when reading, how receptive they were to the book's content, and how that content reacts to everything else in the reader's mind. Re-reading a book also takes time away from the possibility of reading something new....

Some books, I think, should not be re-read: they are a book for a certain stage of a reader's life, and revisiting them would produce nothing positive, and in fact might spoil the good memories of that book. On the road would be disappointing for me if re-read, as it just wouldn't seem as ground-breaking to me now as it did when I first opened the covers of my copy. My Father tells me that the worst thing he did was re-read Seven pillars of wisdom in his middle-age, after first reading it in his early twenties; the re-reading destroyed forever the great opinion he had of the work from his first reading (Seven pillars is, despite this, still on my list of books to read again someday).

Other books though, are a re-readers delight - seemingly inexhaustible mines filled with nuggets of literary gold - Midnight in Sicily is such a book. What seems astounding is that a title ostensibly about the Mafia in Sicily, written by an expatriate Australian (who has never lived in Sicily), could be such a book.

Peter Robb did spend about fifteen years living in Naples, so he does have some experience of Italy. He also had the expatriate's eye for the ambiguities and absurdities of life that a local might pass over. In particular, when it comes to organised crime in Italy, he was not involved, so could ask questions and probe in ways that perhaps locals were unable to do.

I wrote that this book is ostensibly about the Mafia - reading this book also gives you a potted history of Italy, of Italian food, Italian Art, Italian Literature and naturally Italian politics. It is also a great travel book. The wide-ranging arc that Robb takes in his book about crime is what makes it such a gem to re-read. Each time it's read the book gives the reader something new, whether it be the influence of the Arabs on the food of Southern Italy, or the outcome of the great Naples earthquake of 1980, or which late-night-cafe is the favourite haunt of the ladies-of-the-night (who are not all ladies).

Robb could have written a serviceable history of the Mafia along the lines of Mafia Republic, but he wanted to do more - he wanted to get under the skin of the Italian psyche and try to explain to people like me just how something like the Mafia can even exist in what seems to be a western liberal democracy, and become so pervasive.

And in fact most of what might seem at first blush to be off-subject in Midnight in Sicily merely serves to show how pervasive the Mafia is in Italian life. A rumination on the history of ice-cream reminds us that the mafia used to control the snow-trade from Mt. Etna, where the original ice-creams came from. A description of the Mattanza leads into stories of Mafia massacres, a discussion of Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo segues into a visit to his old villa to see the (then) current mayor of Palermo, who was struggling to reduce Mafia influence in the city.

With great skill, Robb brings the reader into the world of the Mafia, where what is not said is in many ways more important than what is - that seemingly innocuous things like receiving a telegram from a certain person has much more meaning than what might be conveyed from the message enclosed. Robb shows how the Mafia has corrupted society by exploiting the Italian character, and by being able to quickly move into the "cracks" that appear in the body politic owing to the sclerotic nature of the Italian State.

Midnight in Sicily was written in 1995, and the focal point of the book is the beginning of the trial in Palermo of Giulio Andreotti - Robb weaves his story through-and-through this book and what stands out with this particular re-read is how in Italian politics only the names change - Berlusconi would fit into this book like an arm into a sleeve (he does appear in a cameo at what was then the start of his political career).

Robb's diversions into Italian history, especially recent history, are an elegy for an Italy that had lasted for Millennia, only to be destroyed after the war by the Mafia. There is a fin-de-siecle quality about Midnight in Sicily, and a repressed rage at how men and women of integrity have been thwarted at every turn by those who crave power and money, who have turned the Mafia into an octopus with tentacles that reach into every sector of business and politics.

Robb desperately wants those who are fighting this insidious curse to prevail, but his rational mind requires him to believe that while some victories might be won, defeat of the Mafia will only occur with a change of mindset and culture in Italy, which seems too big a hope to sustain.

All this information is imparted with a wonderfully lucid, limpid writing style, and an artist's gift of deep observation and synthesis, which leaves the reader wiser at the end of the book. And the end of the book will come very soon, as it is one that is read quickly, even if it is digested slowly.

As an insight into the Mafia, this book is invaluable. As an insight into Italy, it's un-put-downable. as a work of literature, it's definitely a minor classic.

Highly Recommended.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Mafia Republic by John Dickie

Mafia republic : Italy's criminal curse : Cosa Nostra, Camorra and 'Ndrangheta from 1946 to the present
by John Dickie

London : Sceptre, 2013                                                   ISBN 9781444726428


John Dickie has become something of a Mafia "expert", this being his third book about the subject (the others being Mafia brotherhoods and Cosa Nostra). He writes lucidly and well about the peculiarly Italian mix of culture, criminality and power that is encompassed by the major organised crime societies mentioned in the title.

Originally confined to their own areas of the Peninsula and Sicily, Mafia republic describes how, after World War II, these criminal syndicates expanded their range into Northern Italy and beyond - to the USA, Australia, South America and Asia - via the explosion of money provided by the drug trade. Dickie describes the inter-connection between Cosa Nostra and the political networks in Sicily and how up until the end of the Cold War they both relied on each other to confirm their power. Until the present time, it has been the ability of these Mafia organisations to influence the political arena that have enabled them to lurk "openly in the shadows", and infect nearly all areas of business in Italy.

At the end of the Cold War, when the old certainties no longer applied, and with much more at stake owing to the rivers of gold provided by drug money, the connections that had slowly built up between Cosa Nostra and the Camorra particularly, and between Cosa Nostra and the Government, began to break down. "Warfare" broke out, with no-one being immune to the bullets of the assassins. Salvatore Riina, the Corleonosi who murdered his way to power in the 80s, finally went too far when he murdered Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two of the country's most committed anti-mafia judges. Even the politicians couldn't sweep this under the carpet, and the response was heavily damaging to all the Mafia syndicates. The forces of law and order were helped by the "pentiti", Mafia bosses who started to tell all - Riina's murderous rampage had convinced many that it was safer to talk from a prison cell than stay on the streets.

Dickie's book ties these strands together well, and also shows how the Camorra rose to be a power before splintering into so many criminal gangs, and how it is the 'Ndrangheta has become the major world-wide force in drug trafficking, after a late start and a side-track into kidnapping that did not endear it to it's criminal associates.

While this book does not take you into the soul of Sicily in the same way as Midnight in Sicily, it is a great one-book introduction into Italian organized crime.

Recommended.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell