Word: valachi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Like Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy, Underboss is fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of, Al Pacino or no Al Pacino. Both Gravano and Maas (author previously of The Valachi Papers) claim Gravano will get no money from this de facto memoir. But why a man who recently left the federal witness-protection program would want to draw such attention to himself is a mystery. Maybe, given his gift for aphorism, he's thinking about going out on the corporate lecture circuit. "There's enough people to shoot in the head...
...Arco's allegations are disturbing for several reasons. An articulate communicator with deep knowledge of interfamily operations, D'Arco is viewed by federal agents as the nation's most important Mafia rat since Joseph - Valachi, who provided the first real glimpses into organized crime 30 years ago. D'Arco has appeared on the witness stand in virtually every major Mob trial of this decade. If he is lying about Carey, his credibility as a witness is badly damaged. And if D'Arco is telling the truth, the credibility of the government is in question for sitting on hot information that...
...will probably serve in a high-security witness-protection cellblock, Gravano agreed to testify in Gotti's trial and others to come. He thus became one of the highest-ranking mafiosi ever to turn state's evidence and perhaps the most important gangland informant since Mob soldier Joseph Valachi turned on his Genovese bosses in 1963. Prosecutors hope Gravano's testimony, along with that of other witnesses, will help get the don out of his trademark double-breasted suits and into a prison uniform for the rest of his days...
...helped destroy the Scarfo family, the first Mafia family to be wiped off the map. Not since Joe Valachi has anyone done this much damage to the Cosa Nostra. But here you are with a completely new identity under the Federal Witness Protection Program, somewhere a long way from Philadelphia. What's life like...
...author of Serpico and The Valachi Papers is a natural for this kind of material. In a Child's Name crackles with narrative energy, but some readers may wonder to what purpose the book was written, other than to serve as a framework for the inevitable screenplay. Maas suggests that the case "concerns what we as a nation were supposed to be all about" but never really explains how or why. Although Taylor is a psychotic monster, there is nothing epic about his depravity, and Maas never solves the mystery of this man's heart of darkness...