dt, everything you said about Tom is broadly true. But it doesn't prove that Genco was an overrated consigliere. He was a different man for a different time. Vito needed a Sicilian whom he could trust, and who thought like him, on his way up. After he became Numero Uno, a trained lawyer and absolute loyalist fit his needs. And, in any event, we saw little of Genco in the Trilogy.


Tom suffered too much gratuitous abuse from Sonny and Michael. But he admitted to himself (in the novel) that he was "no fit wartime consigliere." I also think he screwed up badly by not knowing that Pentangeli had survived, thus allowing his only client to open himself up to five counts of perjury. Tom told Michael, "Our people with the New York detectives said he was scared..." If "our people" knew, why didn't Tom?