Just finished Peter Lance's Deal With The Devil.

I must say, his expose, if you can call it that, is explosive. The reason why, is that literally on practically every page, he is documenting a lie, proving that someone lied because they contradicted themselves somewhere along the way.

But he doesn't prove the premise of the book which is to shew that FBI handler DeVecchio intended to make Scarpa the boss of the Colombo family so that he could have a top echelon mole on the Commission. It's just not believable. Not because it isn't feasible, but rather because you need more evidence to prove so far reaching a goal.

Peter's evidence for this grand scheme on DeVecchio's part is simply that DeVecchio might have had something to do with instigating the opening shots of the 3rd Colombo war. But even if true, it only proves that DeVecchio wanted to foment a war. The rest is literary sensationalism.

The book is a confusing difficult read. I can't believe I got through it. One paragraph might contain only two very long sentences.....no exaggeration. Here is a sample of a Peter Lance paragraph that just makes you shake your head in anguish...

""While that piece seemed somewhat sympathetic to Cutolo's point of view, for most of the year Capeci had been merciless covering another scandal out of 26 Federal Plaza that seemed designed by the feds to explain the leaks now threatening so many war prosecutions. A year before Cutolo's acquittal, Detective Joe Simone, who with his partner, had been responsible for a third of the collars during the conflict, was shocked to learn that he was the target of FBI charges that he'd sold his badge to the Colombos."" - Deal With The Devil by Peter Lance.

Unbelievable.

The whole book is written in the above manner. Literally. It's an aggravating book to read. You can't read it fast. If you do, you will just be reading words with no coherent meaning. Each paragraph will confuse you (no matter what speed you read), and you will need to circle back and reread sentences and paragraphs 2 and 3 times over and over to grasp the main idea and move on. I don't know why Peter Lance wrote the book that way. His writing style makes me think that he had no idea what he was writing about.