My Mafia Hyperfixation: Three Book Reviews
Mafia Inc.; Business or Blood; Man of Honor
A short while ago I wrote a piece about managing my ADHD hyperfixations, using my most recent learning obsession - the Montreal Mafia - as an example.
Over the past few weeks I have completely finished two books and made it through 4/5ths of another. While I take care to write meaningful book reviews over on my Goodreads page, I thought I’d link to the reviews and excerpt a few paragraphs from each of them here for my Dinner Table Don’ts readers.
Mafia Inc - André Cédilot, André Noël
This book was the first one I read about the rise of the Rizzuto family in Montreal. In the first half of the 20th century, the Montreal underworld was ruled by the Calabrian Bonanno lieutenant, Vic (The Egg) Controni. This book chronicles the successful efforts of the Rizzutos, who began their mafia life as soldiers in Controni’s organizaton, to wrest control of the North American narcotics trade from their Calabrian brothers. Originally written in French, Mafia Inc. wraps up with the death of the Rizzuto patriarch, Nicòlo, from a single sniper shot while Vito, the Godfather, serves time in a Colorado prison for the 1981 Three Capos slayings in New York City.
The book is largely chronological, starting with all-important connections to the Italian island of Sicily, where the Cosa Nostra got its start at the end of the 19th century. From there is spans the globe, particularly Italy, Venezuela, and Canada, with lots of connections to the crime families in New York City. Technically considered a subset of New York's Bonanno family, the Rizzuto story takes as its locus event the 1981 killings of three dissident Bonanno capos (captains) in Brooklyn. Vito Rizzuto, who had successfully dislodged the Calabrian Cotroni clan from their position atop the Montreal underworld, was one of the key gunmen in the murders, and was eventually fingered by several high-ranking New York mafia members including famous turncoats Sal (Good Lookin) Vitale and the boss of the Bonanno family, Joe Massino. Mafia, Inc, translated from the French and written by two journalists who have followed the Montreal underworld for their entire careers, doesn't only recount the many, many killings that happened at the hands of the Rizzuto clan, but also goes into detail on how they effectively controlled the narcotics supply to New York, most of which came from Columbia, via Venezuela, before being shipped north and dropped into the cold waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway, where it was retrieved by Rizzuto associates and shipped south in trucks
Mafia Inc. was turned into a Netflix movie that fictionalizes the names of the characters in the film, likely to avoid litigiation from the family. It focuses on one of Vito’s major criminal ventures that Canadians have remained entirely in the dark about, as it concerned contracts and government payoffs on a proposed bridge over the Strait of Messina, which separates the island of Sicily from the Italian region of Calabria, better known to most North Americans as Italy’s toe.
Business or Blood - Peter Edwards
Essentially picking up where Mafia Inc. left off, Business or Blood chronicles the mob war that waged on the streets of Montreal while Vito Rizzuto was locked up in the United States. Using the slaying of his son Nick Jr as a launch point, Edwards chronicles the various challenges to Vito’s supremacy, much of it coming from Ontario-based ‘Ndrangheta clans.
For me, one of the most interesting components of the Italian organized crime world is the interplay between the different Italian mafia-type groups, particularly the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. In the Canadian underworld, Montreal is generally considered to be Sicilian territory, while Ontario is considered to be Calabrian territory. You can imagine how, with The Sicilian Boss, supposed Godfather of The Sixth Family, stuck inside a maximum security penitentiary in Colorado, the 'Ndrangheta, based in the Toronto suburbs of Vaughan and Woodbridge, might have designs on Montreal. … the whole of the eastern North American drug trade was facilitated by the Sicilian Rizzuto clan; over in Europe, however, the Calabrians are considered to be the most significant players in the drug trade. Rizzuto, helpless to do anything - he had to be talked out of asking the Americans to let him attend his son's funeral back in Canada - can only look on as major players in the Toronto 'Ndrangheta clans compete amongst themselves and other Montreal underworld figures, for supremacy of the streets.
Business or Blood was turned into a television series for City TV, which first aired in 2017. It was on Canadian Netflix for a while, but is no longer available on that platform.
A Man of Honor - Joseph Bonanno
While I’m not as interested in the intrigues of the New York mob, I had heard that the Father of one of New York’s Five Families, Joseph Bonanno, had written an autobiography that so incensed American law enforcement that they used it as a springboard to expose the criminal work of the famed Commission of the mafia in New York. In this video, former Colombo family enforcer Michael Franzese explains how:
I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I got about 4/5ths of the way through before deciding to put it down. As I explain, the first half of the book, despite treating The Life with kid gloves, was interesting and provided a glimpse into a secret world. The second half, however, devolved into the ravings of an old man who believed himself to be unfairly painted as a Criminal Kingpin when - at least according to him - he was the victim of a massive government conspiracy to sully his reputation as a Father and committed Family Man.
Bonanno's writing style is what you might expect from someone who spent their life living the criminal life but still imagines themselves a respectable person. There are several notable omissions in the book, including the Donnie Brasco fiasco, but most notable of all was the omission of Bonanno's apparent plan to murder a number of Bosses on the Commission, including his own cousin Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo. The widely accepted story is that after Bonanno was sold out by the hitman Joseph Colombo in 1964, he went into hiding, headed first for Montreal, where he tried to buy a 20% stake in The Saputo Cheese Company before being arrested by Canadian authorities for lying on his immigration forms. Weeks after returning to the United States, he went missing again, this time for two years. After describing how he was treated like a King in prison in Montreal, he became an unwilling victim as he described a humiliating kidnapping by his own cousin Stefano Magaddino. While it's hard to know what actually happened while Bonanno was in hiding and/or kidnapped, his constant protestations of both innocence and ignorance eventually started to wear on me. To hear Bonanno tell it, he was always the victim in inter-family conflict, always misunderstood, and never at fault.
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