The Butcher, by Phillip Carlo is the story of Bonanno Family member Tommy "Karate" Pitera. Pitera got his nickname because of his interest in Japanese martial arts, cuisine, lifestyle and history. He went to Japan as a teenager and lived there for two years training in martial arts.

Upon return to Brooklyn, the diminutive mobster hooked up with the Bonannos, was formally inducted and became a feared killer.

This should have been a better book. It feels like it was rushed. The author makes a number of presentation mistakes.
There are neither footnotes nor index. There is sloppy use of terms. Pitera is described as a capo but since he doesn't seem to have any other made men in his crew, perhaps he was really just a soldier. There's certainly no description of any promotion. Anthony Spero, Bonnano bigshot, is alternatively described as the Family counselor or underboss-sometimes in the same paragraph. I know that roles were in flux but which one was it? If both, what was changing and how did that impact Pitera?

But the worst flaw in my opinion is the author's use of omniscient third person narrative. At this time Tommy Pitera has not granted Carlo long interviews detailing his thoughts, hopes and fears at various times during his life. Nor (to my knowledge) have his parents, wife, girlfriends, fellow karate students or other intimates spoken on record with Carlo.

So there's really no way for Phillip Carlo to know exactly what Pitera was thinking or why he did what he did. To speak definitively as if you know what's going on in someone else's head is irritating. William Roemer did that in his books but at least he could always fallback on the "informant who I can't reveal" trope. Carlo doesn't have that.

Perhaps realizing that his ability to draw a picture of Pitera is somewhat limited, Carlo spends a great deal of time depicting the DEA agents who would help take Pitera down. However these guys are not really that compelling either.

There's also conflicting/self-serving information that Carlo gets from the DEA. For example it supposedly was a DEA sting alone that took out Vito Genovese with no mention of the oddity of a sitting mob boss meeting with a low level drug courier or Frank Lucas was supplied from the Gambinos and Bonannos with no mention of the Golden Triangle connection.

Carlo's primary source for much of his information is Frank Gangi, a member of Pitera's crew and a man who by his own admission is a alcoholic and junkie who was involved in at least three murders committed with Pitera. This person only sees the light after he gets busted for drunk driving and falls apart. Of course it is just as likely that Gangi and Pitera realized at the same time that Gangi was a weak link and Gangi ran to the police. In any event Gangi is just not a sympathethic figure. At all.

One good thing that this book does however is strip away the fiction that there is any real difference between the Mafia and other so-called street thugs or gangsters. Pitera kills because he's ordered to do so but he also kills because he's annoyed or bored or simply wants what someone else has. His ONLY business seems to be drugs. He's surrounded by lowlifes, junkies and party girls. Other than killing a made man, Pitera doesn't seem to ask or need permission for any of his murders.

Speaking of Pitera, another character tells his wife "He has no friends because he killed them all!". That pretty much sums up Tommy Pitera.

I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars. I would wait to purchase it in paperback version or used.

thanks for the review, i was planning on waiting for the paperback and hopefully carlo fixes some of the petty mistakes from the hardcover. He failed to do that with the Gaspipe book.

In that book he says that Gambino member Angelo "quack Quack" Ruggiero got his nickname from ducking subpoenas, when in reality that's how Tony "Ducks" Corralo got that nickname and Angelo got his from being a chatterbox. That mistake was in the hardcover version of Gaspipe which I saw somebody mentioned in an Amazon review and once I got the paperback I saw that it was still in that version as well!

I understand the author has Lou Gehrig's disease but still that shouldn't be a substitute to try and getting the facts straight!

I just finished "Miami Babylon," by Gerald Posner.



Not a mob book, per se, although it includes a detailed account of Chris Paciello's rise and fall as both a Staten Island thug and the self ordained club king of Miami Beach.

It covers the "gentrification" of Miami and Miami Beach in the years following the Mariel boatlift, which includes crooked cops, shady politicians and cocaine cowboys, all treated like celebrities in Sin City. It tells the story of how South Beach went from being a dilapidated senior community in the early 80s, to the east coast version of Las Vegas that it is today.

A very interesting read, especially if you're familiar with the area.

Next to Vegas, South Beach is the most lunatic place in America.

Quite a change from when the old ladies were living in the deco hotels, huh, TB?

I've been reading John Dillinger by Dary Matera as a project for school and it's a very interesting read so far. It has a lot of good info that i haven't seen before and i enjoy that it goes back before Dillinger was a celebrity crook and a nationwide phenomana and tells about his earlier days of crime. It's pretty damn good and i recommend it to anyone interested in the "jackrabbit"

Ive not brought a Mafia book for a while now,should really get back to reading them as there my fav genre to read..

Just read MAKING JACK FALCONE by FBI undercover agent Joaquin Garcia,who bought down various Gambino wiseguys like Greg DePalma and his crew. A good read,informative and interesting!

Good, quick read, Yogi. There was a secondary story in that book about police corruption in Hollywood, Florida. My neighbor in Florida was married to one of those cops at one time. She told me he was a real creep. I think he ended up getting like 14 years, if I'm not mistaken.

Was he Kevin Companion PB? I have literally just put the book down and the what happened to the crooks index was at the end (so still fresh in the memory)

That's not her last name, but they were married some time ago, so it's possible. I'll find out and pm you.

Thanks PB.

About Falcone,i chuckled when he wrote that with all the wiseguy feasts he attended,and him being a big eater anyways, he ballooned up to 450 pounds

Wow!!

Yeah, because before he met them he was a svelte 375 .

Literally a bag of bones

I've just read 'I was one of them'. A biography of Giusy Vitale, sister of Leonarde, Vito and Michele Vitale from Partinico. It was interesting to read about the 'women' in the Mafia and how they were indoctrinated. Good reading stuff.

Got MADE MEN by Greg Smith for Christmas and have read it already. A good entertaining account of the rather hapless DeCalvacantes rorm New Jersey and their similarities to the Sopranos. I enjoyed it very much!

Glad you enjoyed it Yogi this book is on my amazon wish list and im sure i'll get round to reading it one day..

Now reading another Christmas one. THE FIRST FAMILY by Mike Dash about the Morello/Terranova alliance in New York in the early 1900's.

Very good!

Sounds interesting. I hope you write a review after you've completed it.

I reviewed it last year. It's on the previous page of this forum, near the bottom.

Thx!

And i agree with you whole-heartedly TB. Dash is an excellent historical writer,its hard to remember he is actually English, he gets such a feel for his subject.

Ive read this also excellent book on the early NY mafia..

Just read BLOOD AND HONOR by GEORGE ANASTASIA. All about the Philly mob in the 80's and how it tore itself apart under the leadership of the despotic Nicky Scarfo.

An excellent book. One of the best mob books i have ever read!

Great book, Yogi. I think it's the best book ever written about the Philly mob.

You should now follow that up with "The Last Gangster," also written by Anastasia. It's the story of Ron Previte, an ex-cop turned wiseguy. And a real lowlife, to boot.

It's written in the same style as "Blood and Honor," and offers a bit of a coda to the events of the first book.

I'll put that on the list PB. I have read another by Anastasia called THE GOODFELLA TAPES. All about Philly in the 90's,post Scarfo,when Stanfa and Skinny Joe Merlino were in conflict.

Another good read that!

Yogi, I did a mini-review of "Last Gangster" in this section (page 11). I agree with PB about its similarity to "Blood and Honor".

Thanks Lilo. i will check that out!

I'm reading Iceman at the moment. You know the stupid part of it? Towards the end I still hope the man doesn't get arrested, while he has done horrible things to people! Somehow I feel empathy with him....

Read THE MAD ONES last night at work. I know it got poor reviews on here a while back and i have to agree a little. It is like the author is going out of his way to be uber-exciting and hip in his writing style. I cannot comment on any discrepancies in the geographical references, being 5,000 miles away, but i take the boys in here at their word and presume he was pumping out a load of crap in places.

Has anyone heard of/read the book "Unto the daughters" by Karen Tintori?
She's a Detroit area Sicilian-American who discovered that close to 60-70 years ago her great-aunt was murdered by her own brothers because she did not wish to marry a local mafia bigshot (this was not done at the request of the mafia). I saw it in a bookstore recently...

To go back to THE MAD ONES there is a bit that made me chuckle. Folsom talks about the old Dons having battles of wit with riddles and songs. He uses Joe Profaci as an example. I believe it goes something along the lines of "If i die in Brookulino bury me with me my mandolino"

Wow. I bet that one won him the riddle game

My youngest boy could come up with that one

Yogi, the story about the rhyming contests was lifted from Joe Bonanno's autobiography, "A Man of Honor" (sic). All autobios are self-serving, as is Bonanno's. But he has plenty of interesting stories in it--whether or not they're true. He gives the most detailed account of the famous Castellemmarese War, and also describes the workings of the Commission.

As you may be aware, Rudy Giuliani, when he was the top Federal prosecutor for New York (before he became mayor), "got hit by the thunderbolt": he realized from Bonanno's description that the Commission fit the pattern for a "racketeer influenced corrupt organization" under the recently passed RICO law. He brought the famous "Commission Case" and sent several NYC Dons away for 100-plus years. "I ran the Mafia out of New York," he boasted. It was an exaggeration, but he did deal them a body blow from which they've never recovered.

Holy Hell i laughed so hard at this when i read that book, just the mental picture of it all.

Good review of The Butcher, Lilo, spot on. i should have spent my money on "I Heard You Paint Houses" with Frank Sheehan & Charles Brandt.

Thats not true. i actually have a stange compulsion to shop-lift true-crime books. Actually thats not true. Or is it?

MMD, I don't know if someone already did a review of "I heard you paint houses" or not but I liked the book. It seemed to have a bit more substance and validity. Of course like any true crime book there was a bit of "I speak without fear of contradiction !" (because everyone else is dead) included within. It's been a while since I read it so I can't remember now if some of Mr. Sheeran's most outlandish claims were conclusively debunked. Either way though it's entertaining..