Customer Reviews

Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'll break this down quickly:

In general, this book is poorly written and poorly edited with lots of typos and poorly constructed sentences and paragraphs.

However, Tampa natives like myself will enjoy the content due to the familiarity of the names and places involved.

I really looked forward to reading this book. My family was a part of Ybor City for 3+ generations and my grandfather never tires of telling tales of Tampa's lawless past. (Although he was not a participant, it was impossible to live in that time and place and not know stories of the open corruption all around.)

I should have just listened to my abuelo. This book takes a potentially fascinating topic and turns it into a mind-numbingly dull list of names and murders. It reads like a rap sheet, with very little color or context. It's not even chronological, with brief tales of one mobster plopped between stories from different decades for no apparent reason.

As an aspiring author myself, it pains me to see prose tortured worse than a ratted-out FBI informant. Unfortunately, that's what happens much more often one would expect in a published work. Sentences are sometime tangled worse than a bowl of linguini, forcing the reader to tease them apart. And if read "part of his face was blown off" one more time in a description of a mafia hit, my own face may have blown off.

Besides the stylistic problems, there were also some factual errors. I found one pretty quick: on the first page of the first chapter. The author states that Tampa became a city in 1873 when it was actually incorporated in 1855. That's a pretty basic fact, but it might slip by the casual reader. And there were many more like it sprinkled throughout the text.

More obvious are other mistakes in which the author contradicts himself. For example, a mobster named Red Italiano is stated to have fled to Sicily when the feds were closing in, then later retired to New Orleans. But several pages later, the author states that Italiano fled to Mexico and "there lived out the rest of his life" (another overused phrase in this book). I don't know where Red ended up. Neither does the author, apparantly.

For the reasons above, this book was a major disappointment. Even worse is that since the topic is of limited commercial appeal, it will probably be the final say on the subject for years to come. By the time anyone else tries to revisit the tale, the major and minor players may have all passed away and the real history will be irretrievably lost.

The bloody, intriguing, and still partially covered-up story of Tampa's colorful past deserves better than this.

This book gives the reader a flavor of the criminal element of Tampa society that was active in a period that extended from the early 1900's to the mid-1960's, with connections that continue into the present day. It is an interesting read, but much of its contents must be taken with a large dose of skepticism. The information regarding gangland murders and gang family connections are generally well known, but much of the information about "police corruption" is undocumented and based upon speculation. In particular, the naming of a Tampa Police Department supervisor who went on to be elected Sheriff as having been in a position to be suspected of corruption is tainted by innuendo that falls short of accusation, and is unwarranted.

It appears the author relied heavily upon an unidentified source who provided an oral history of the era based upon what he believed to have been the actions and motives of the major players. That source is likely to have come from the criminal element, not the law enforcement side.

There are some gaps in the chronology and it is sometimes necessary to backtrack and re-read some accounts in order to ascertain how the different stories fit together. There is an uneveness to the writing which suggests either the absence of a good editor or a rush to get the book into print.

Despite these defects, the book does give an interesting overview of the violent era of Tampa's gang-dominated past.

From the blood-stained Mercury on the cover, to the police-blotter's list of the `usual suspects' at the end, you know immediately that THIS IS NOT A NOVEL. With all the detail and staccato of Walter Winchell reading you the Police Gazette comes a tour of Tampa's millennium of mobsters - this powerful first effort to profile all the players, all the made-guys, and even a few innocent bystanders of "Tampa's underworld" heretofore swept under the carpet. A piercing review of a parade of characters and their sometimes anecdotal anarchy, set in timelessness and the tiny town of Tampa. A microcosm of Mafia schemers and their plots, ploys and payoffs; prosecutorial passes, and presidential "whackings." From turn-of-the-century "Little Havana" gambling halls and a numbers racket called "bolita" ran crooked games to fund favored politico and policemen. To the smugglers, bootleggers, loan-sharks and their hitmen of Tampa's "Era of Blood" - daylight point-blank shotgun "hits" of rivals fighting for control of bolita bars throughout the barrio. There's the "bodyguard" nick-named "Scarface" who owned the "Boston Bar" where "Omerta" ruled the road, and those who were even thought to be a rat were found in the river or the bay, in an oil drum, or never found at all. And the eventual and inevitable rise of Santo Trafficante Jr. as one of the world's most powerful international gambling-smuggling mobsters in history. The true "Teflon Don" who never went "up the river" but did end up residing in a mausoleum in the L'Unione Italiana cemetery just blocks from the little Latin Quarter. His funeral attended by all the local notoriety except one: his brother in-crime Henry, as a decades-long feud between them over the family business exceeded even death. This is not fiction, it is TRUE CRIME. Researched from libraries, referenced with archived newspaper articles, and from interviews of law enforcement officers - only they will talk about it... because as one Tampa official put it, "If I told you..., we'd both be dead." Tampa Historian GARY MORMINO says, "Don't expect the Tampa Chamber of Commerce to recommend this book" for more than one reason I suspect. And that's reason enough for me to read it twice.

Having lived through several decades of Mafia rule in the Tampa area, I found the book informative and interesting. It filled in several mysteries of changes that occurred during my time in the area. It was succinct and objective, without being boring and documentary. If you are interested in how they spread and how the Mafia controlled their "territory", this book will help explain what you need to know. It is a history that can not be swept under the rug.

And this book helped me to better understand the Tampa Mob, however the book lacks details, rather is mostly a summary of the Mob in Tampa.

I tried in vain to read this book, as I am very interested in Tampa's rich history. I didn't see the first citation until several chapters in, and the research in general is extremely weak. The author simply repeats newspaper accounts without adding anything else, so he perpetuates flawed or false accounts without questioning them.

The terrible methodology would be partly forgivable if the author supplied a compelling text that was fun to read. Instead, the writing itself is laughable, with no real attempt to edit for style or content. There is certainly no artistry in the writing--- it is bone dry.

As an aspiring historian with a deep interest in Florida history, this book was too bad to finish. I'm happy that I borrowed it from a friend rather than buy a copy. If I had bought a copy, I think i would have sent the book to the author, only beside a fish wrapped in newspaper. "Cigar City Mafia sleeps with the fishes."

I tried real hard to like this book and finally made it to the end; it seemed to promise so much early on then it gradually fizzed out. Essentially this book is a series of disjointed factual statements that goes on and on chapter after chapter. He has tried to cover too much ground with no real revelations or new ideas. If he wants to write about the Mafia history he needs to learn a few lessons on how to do it like seasoned mafia writers' Selwyn Raab, Thomas Reppetto or maybe John Dickie.

When he does venture an opinion it often seems poorly reasoned. His idea that Murder Incorporated was largely a myth is laughable, l noticed that his bibliography does not include the Burton Turkus book Murder Incorporated, if he had read this book and some others he would not have made this comment. On the positive side there is some interesting information about the criminal history of Tampa and characters like Charlie (Dean of the Underworld) Wall. I was hoping for more information about the life of Charlie, but somehow it was not forthcoming in the book, this was disappointing! I agree with an earlier reviewer that much of the information about "police corruption" is speculative and there is no real evidence for it. That is not to say it existed but this book does not handle this area very well.

Deitche is young and from Central New Jersey, but did attend college in South Florida. I did not find any indication that he has been a full-time journalist or law enforcement figure. This is an amateur labor of love.

Fascinating topic and a decent overview for those who will take this with a high degree of scepticism. Deitche conveys lots of data, but frankly it reads like a very long-winded high school term paper. If he were 17 and I were his history teacher, I'd give him a B-plus, with a few points off for bad grammar: countless sentences end with prepositions, he misuses words, such and such was for "all `intensive' purposes....." (p. 180), typos, etc.

Of course, he throws in the requisite JFK ("J.F.K.") conspiracy theories, which keep things interesting in the midst of the mindless litany of similar sounding, unexceptional events.

While his energy and enthusiasm are commendable, I personally found the amateurism of it all off-putting at times. For example, though printed in 2004, he cites the Internet as if it were brand new (to him?). And you get the sense that he's less critical than he ought to be about some of the sites he utilizes.

Though it is not well-written or compelling, what really could have helped rescue this book would have been simply the documenting and organizing of scattered materials on this important topic. Many of his sources are otherwise hard to access for most readers: local newspaper articles, police reports, etc. Unfortunately, he provides only 59 footnotes in 268 pages of text (one footnote for every four pages or more!)

Regarding the printing by Barricade Books in NJ - the cover photo, paper, and typeface are decent, but the binding (glue) on my copy did not stand up to one complete reading. The book split near the photo section in the middle, though the pages have not yet started to fall out. The center photos are interesting, though they mostly come from two sources -police mug shots, and one mafia relative who provided some snapshots. A little more time devoted to digging up other shots would have added a lot.

Sadly, there is no index to the book, though there is a very helpful glossary of dozens of the most prominent figures from the narrative.

I've read around 100 plus "true crime" Mafia books over the years. This one is one of the most poorly put-together books I've ever read dealing with Cosa Nostra. Was there even an editor? I see a mention of a Ken Miller. The book is full of spelling errors, run-on sentences, misplaced commas abound, and many factual errors. It feels like it was written by a high school student. It's definitely something I would not read twice.