The best mob books that tell it like it is

The Godfather, universally acknowledged to be the best novel dealing with the lives and struggles of an American organized crime family, is immensely readable. The main character, Don Corleone, vividly portrayed in the original Godfather film by Marlon Brando, is a living, breathing man who falls into a life of crime, eventually becoming capo of his own underworld family. Readers are presented with a riveting, honest, often ambivalent depiction of the American version of the Sicilian mafia, also referred to as Cosa Nostra. Each time I go back to The Godfather I am held in thrall by the fast-paced story, brilliant characterizations, and clear, lucid writing. At times, I am also stunned by the brutality of many of its scenes. The Godfather is both beautiful and harsh.

The Valachi Papers, a 1968 book written by Peter Maas, is the life story of Joe Valachi, a former member of the Genovese crime family, who testified in 1963 before a Senate committee, revealing until-then confidential information about the American mafia. The book was made into a film in 1972, starring Charles Bronson as Valachi.

Maas describes in vivid detail Joe Valachi’s initiation into and rise within a mafia family, frequently relying on Valachi’s own gutsy descriptions. Although it is a biography the book has the verve and pace of a thrilling work of fiction. In many ways better than even a well-written novel, The Valachi Papers is an edge-of-your-seat reading experience.

This book is the biography of Henry Hill, who, at the age of eleven, began working as an assistant for a boss of the Lucchese crime family in Manhattan. The book was turned into the movie Goodfellas, with Ray Liotta playing the role of Hill.

Fast-paced and filled with brutally violent incidents, Wise Guy portrays Henry Hill’s involvement in the life of the crime organization. In 1980, twenty-five years after he began working with the Lucchese family, Hill was arrested for heroin trafficking. Knowing he would be convicted at trial and would receive a lengthy sentence, and understanding that members of the family would likely have him murdered in prison, Hill testified under oath to federal prosecutors in return for admission into the Witness Protection Program.

Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia is the autobiographical account of Joseph Pistone’s infiltration of a branch of the Colombo crime family. Pistone, an FBI Special Agent, spent six harrowing years as a member of the family, going by the name Donnie Brasco. The book was turned into the movie Donnie Brasco, starring Johnny Depp.

Unlike other books that deal with organized crime, this one is extraordinarily chilling because it is written in the words of an undercover agent, who knew that, at any given moment, his identity could have been revealed, which would have led to deadly consequences.

This is a novel about Italian immigrants struggling to survive in New York City’s Little Italy during the early years of the twentieth century amid the growth of the Black Hand, the precursor to the American mafia. The book is unique in that most of the characters are the author’s actual ancestors and people with whom they had come into contact during that era. Similarly, the grisly central events described in the story all occurred.

It is beautifully written and filled with fascinating historical details. The characters and the descriptions of places and events come alive on the page. Fabiano includes an extensive Glossary of Italian Terms used in the book, as well as a multi-generational family tree. Elizabeth Street makes for very good reading!