I have finished the Al D'Arco book and enjoyed it, and yes, as PMAC has said, there are things in there we've already seen, but overall it's a good book and I would recommend it to others.
I'm struggling to finish this book. It seems that a large amount of the book is from before he was appointed acting boss. And personally, my interest is during the time he was promoted to acting boss to when he flipped.
I finished the book, and it ended up being a very good read. D'Arco was painted as a somewhat sympathetic figure, as they all are. But he seemed believable.
I wish the book went into more detail about his relationship with Paulie Vario. He worked with Paulie and even took over his crew....there must have been a lot of stories left out.
Also, the story relating to the Beck-Cuomo Ray's Pizzeria was very interesting. It was famous for their pizza, and it was surprising to read about how it was a front for drugs.
It was interesting that Little Davey Petillo was one of D'Arco's earliest mentors in the crime business. Petillo was the guy convicted with Luciano in the prostitution case.
Also, the book pulls no punches about the mob's heavy involvement with drugs. However, as usual, our hero gets pinched for narcotics despite getting a very raw deal from the judge and jury. We have the main character claiming that he wants nothing to do with narcotics... despite spending prison time for dealing H, having a son addicted and also dealing, and a daughter in law addicted. Reminded me a bit of Lucky Luciano insisting he had nothing to do with drugs despite having nobody believe him.
There were also contracting stories between Capeci and Carlo's books. Carlo's book accused D'Arco of lying on the stand, using Casso's stories as his own- in particular, claiming to be in commission meetings with the Chin. Capeci's book described D'Arco as being honest to a fault and was a star witness, who was highly sought after by prosecutors.
