The Good Guys [Hardcover]

Bill Bonanno (Author), Joe Pistone (Author), David Fisher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2005

* Chain-smoking Mickey Fists isn't sure if he's an "addict" or an "attic." * The Freemont Avenue Social Club is on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. So are the best wiretaps FBI money can buy. * Skinny Al weighed 320 pounds and lived life to the fullest...until someone burned out his eardrums and shot his body full of holes. Hundreds of writers have tried to capture life inside the mob, but no one has ever had the inside access to write a book like this one. Drawing on the firsthand experience of former undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone-aka Donnie Brasco-as well as former Mafia prince Bill Bonanno, The Good Guys straddles both sides of the law, races relentlessly through the New York City underworld, and crackles with characters and moments so vivid they will never let you go. At Columbia University, a professor of Russian literature has gone missing. A few miles and light-years away, Little Eddie LaRocca and Bobby San Filippo are on the move-dealing in everything from hot-sheet hotels to bootleg Fuji film. When the hoods are sent to find the professor, they find out that someone else is looking, too. Beautiful FBI agent Laura Russo is making her preppy partner's head spin. She knows the missing man is important-and somehow connected to a recent mob hit. While Eddie and Bobby are fighting their way through ugly deeds and pretty coeds, these feds will cook up some business of their own, turning a little disagreement among criminals into an all-out war... Capturing the organized crime world of the go-go '80s, Pistone and Bonanno's one-of-a-kind collaboration is bad to the bone-and as marvelously authentic as it gets.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite the impressive credentials of coauthors Bonanno, billed as "the former head of the Bonanno crime family," and Pistone (aka Donnie Brasco), whose undercover work inside that Mafia organization while an FBI agent laid the groundwork for the historic federal organized crime prosecutions that decimated New York's five families, the collaborators have produced a routine FBI vs. the mob novel. Set in New York City in the 1980s, the story uses alternate chapters to focus on two FBI agents, Connor O'Brien and Laura Russo, and on Bobby Hats, a brutal thug aiming to become a made man. Their paths cross after the disappearance of a Columbia University Russian language professor, Peter Gradinsky, who may be connected with a rising Russian mafia syndicate working a fuel-oil scam. Fans of Pistone's recent nonfiction debunking of popular mob myths, The Way of the Wiseguy, may be disappointed by the romantic stereotypes about La Cosa Nostra (Bobby observes that his Mafia cronies provided "a level of friendship and trust, honor and pride, that he had never experienced before in his life"). Still, the pairing of two high-profile opponents in the New York crime wars of yore can't help generating media attention, which should translate into healthy sales.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Fuhgeddaboudit! Bonanno and Pistone: a pairing made in bookseller heaven." -- --Kirkus Reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (January 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446529656
• ISBN-13: 978-0446529655
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,090,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A crisp, tightly woven story told at a brisk pace, January 22, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Good Guys (Hardcover)

Americans love the Mafia. It's an odd sort of affection, given our reported high regard for moral values. But if actions truly speak louder than words, then we have a serious wise guy addiction. Consider the popular success of HBO's "The Sopranos," the return of "Growing Up Gotti" for another season on A&E, and the fact that Mario Puzo's GODFATHER saga no longer sleeps with the fishes, thanks to the efforts of author Mark Winegardner. So let's be stand-up guys and dolls and own up to it: we can't get enough badda-bing badda-boom.

So who better to fill our minimum requirement of whacking and wisecracking than a couple of guys with explicit knowledge of the life? Bill Bonanno is a former high-echelon member of the Bonanno crime family. Joe Pistone is a former FBI agent whose undercover exploits as Donnie Brasco made their way from the page to the big screen. This unlikely pair constitutes a kind of mob fiction dream team, the product of which is THE GOOD GUYS.

Bonanno and Pistone, along with co-author David Fisher, have crafted a surprisingly entertaining mystery that manages to combine insider knowledge of the mob and the FBI with well-drawn characters (including several large, dangerous men with interesting nicknames like "Tony Cupcakes"), frequently hilarious dialogue, and enough gunplay and violence to add a satisfying edge.

The story revolves around the search for the missing Professor G, a Russian language educator. He's simultaneously being sought by FBI agents Connor O'Brien and Laura Russo, and by Mafia career climber Bobby San Filippo, aka Bobby Hats, aka Bobby Blue Eyes. The trail to the missing professor leads through the Slavic Studies department at Columbia to the Russian mob in Brighton Beach and on to the trunk of an abandoned car into which is stuffed the enormous and grotesquely mangled corpse of 320-pound Skinny Al D'Angelo.

THE GOOD GUYS rewards readers with a crisp, tightly woven story told at a brisk pace. It isn't Tolstoy, but then it doesn't have to be. It's solid entertainment that will provide a lasting wiseguy fix for even the most rabid Mob-o-phile. It's a good read, pally. Caspisce?

--- Reviewed by Bob Rhubart

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ABSORBING STORY READ BY "THE GOOD GUYS" THEMSELVES, February 6, 2005

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Good Guys (Audio CD)

Eye witness testimony, first-hand reports - nothing grabs us much more quickly than someone who can tell it like it actually is or was. When it comes to the mob, few are willing to talk about it. Bill Bonnano and Joe Pistone are more than willing and they do talk about it in absorbing detail with "The Good Guys."

More reliable sources couldn't be found. Bill Bonanno is a former chief in the Bonnano crime family, and the author of "Bound By Honor: A Mafioso's Story."

More widely known as Donnie Brasco, Joe Pistone was an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the mob. His daring eventually led to the New York crime prosecutions that ripped apart that city's top five crime families. What a pair!

"The Good Guys" takes place in, where else? New York City. It's the 1980s and a Russian language professor at Columbia University has disappeared. He may have ties to a burgeoning Russian mafia syndicate. Little Eddie LaRocca and Bobby San Filippo (not good guys) are dispatched to find him. They soon find out they're not the only ones searching - the FBI is also chasing down leads.

Listeners will enjoy meeting FBI agents Connor O'Brien and Laura Russo. Those who have followed The Sopranos will be familiar with characters similar to the lethal Bobby Hats, and his stop-at-nothing attempts to rise higher in the mob.

Good listening for those who enjoy prime crime.

- Gail Cooke

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Underwhelming, But Never Boring, January 19, 2005

By 

Sir George Martini "Verbalosity" (Fromage, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Good Guys (Hardcover)

"The Good Guys" is a flawed, but entertaining story written by retired undercover FBI Agent Joe Pistone and coauthor Bonanno, former head of a well-known New York crime family. Pistone, better known by his alias Donnie Brasco, runs into Bonanno during the investigation of a fuel-oil scam supposedly operated by the Russian mafia. Overall, this book based on real events that make it believable, but not essential.