The Good Rat: A True Story (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: jeweler number, Nicky Guido, Burt Kaplan, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Breslin, renowned journalist and author of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, revisits a familiar wise-guy milieu in this collection of stories and anecdotes about the mob. His writing, like the Mafia itself, breezily transitions from humorous to horrifying as he regales the reader with loosely connected tales of mistaken identity, crooked cops, snitches and murder. Unlike the Sopranos and the many other touchstones of the American love affair with organized crime, for Breslin, there's good and there's evil, with little in between. As always, however, nicknames are half the fun, as Sammy The Bull Gravano, Tony Café and Gaspipe Casso take the stage in the Mafia hotspots of the five boroughs, including Greenpoint, in Brooklyn, and Ozone Park, in Queens, as Breslin delights with stories from the Mafia's heyday. Breslin's storytelling is set to the sweet background music of one of the mob's biggest canaries, Burton Kaplan, as he sings to a grand jury. The author's vernacular precision contrasts sharply with the plodding sterility of Kaplan's grand jury testimony, and as we find out, good guys can often tell ugly stories more authentically than the bad guys. The effect is tragicomic as Kaplan's testimony sounds the death knell for his associates. These stories unveil the strict code of conduct, often broken, of a dying breed. According to Kaplan, however, while illegal gambling and extortion may be waning industries, the myth of the American Mafia will never die. (Feb.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

The Good Rule demythologizes the all-but-glamorous life of organized crime. While Breslin focuses on the trial of the “Mafia Cops,” a story also recounted in Guy Lawson and William Oldham’s The Brotherhoods (2006), Breslin, to critics’ delight, uses the case to delve deep inside the Mafia’s demise and the bloody, backstabbing stories within it. An unsentimental writer, Breslin sees the mob for what it isâ€"a group of cold-blooded sheep, to which his inclusion of trial-transcript excerpts attests. Yet reviewers couldn’t help but comment on the author’s somewhat regretful tone, a funeral hymn for an era. Chronological confusion may trip up some readers, but overall, “For true crime fans, The Good Rat is the next standard-bearer; for Breslin fans new and old, it’s a must” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; Second Printing edition (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060856661
• ISBN-13: 978-0060856663
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,846 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #23 in	Books > Nonfiction > True Accounts > Organized Crime
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plus la change, as they say, February 19, 2008

By	David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a fine addition to anyone's true crime shelf. You're not going to see a romantic view of mob life here. Tony Soprano might be interesting to have as a neighbor, but the people in this book are such that you'd much prefer that they live in a different part of town, or better yet, a different town altogether. The book does present a rather one-dimensional view of the criminals involved: you will not be reading about the kind of family (personal, not mob) life that helped make Tony Soprano three-dimensional. The figures in the book may have been decent people at home, but that's not the point here.

You'll get a view of current mob life--the violence, the paranoia, the omerta, and the breaking of omerta. Some things have changed from the heyday of Murder, Inc in the 1940s, but much is still the same: plus la change, plus la meme chose. Burton Kaplan today is little different from his counterparts of 50-70 years ago: surveillance and eavesdropping techinques are better, the FBI has discovered the Mafia, and witness protection programs have led to a partial decline in omerta. Where once a stand-up guy could do 5 years in prison, with RICO standing up for 30 years is less appealing. Kid Twist Reles' revelations in Murder, Inc were eye-opening back then: Burton Kaplan's testimony is fascinating, but he has lots of fellow canaries, so to speak.

You'll get a very gritty tale here. These are not nice fellows at all. Some reviews may speak of the contrast between good and evil in the book, but that's not really true. NYC policemen as contract killers is a very unpleasant thought, but it's hardly new (see the book Satan's Circus). What is more interesting is how one of these cops, whose uncle was a well-known mobster, and who himself had a criminal record, was admitted to the police force and rose high in the ranks. His moonlighting for the mob did not come as a major surprise. His outing was unusual: you get the feeling that there seemed to be a lot of tolerance in law enforcement for his activities. The Feds brought him down--not the NYPD.

What I would have liked to see here is perhaps some kind of map or chart, and a cast of characters (there's a very brief list, which mostly just mentions names). If you're thoroughly familiar with the greater NY mob scene, you shouldn't have a problem. But for most people, being able to check a cast that listed, say, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano along with his family, role in the family, etc, would have been helpful. There are interesting people who get brief mentions, such as Jimmy Burke (see GoodFellas) and the fearsome Roy DeMeo, whose murder crew made even John Gotti nervous (see Murder Machine). Unless you're a true crime fan, such names might not carry the nuances that they should. But Good Rat covers one slice of the scene in greater New York, and covers it very well.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "MAFIA-ASSOCIATE "RAT'S-OUT" TWO NYPD COPS WHO KILLED FOR THE COSA NOSTRA!", February 9, 2008

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

The author of this fascinating true crime tell-all is none other than the inimitable Brooklyn/Queens/New York symbol of "old-school" mob reporting Jimmy Breslin. The initial core of this story was supposed to be the trial of Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two NYPD cops who performed contract murders for the Mafia, along with providing any type of confidential police "intel" that would benefit the mob. That included making available classified information that ranged from wire taps, which helped the Mafia PERMANENTLY weed out "rats", to addresses of individuals on the "lam", thus enabling the Mafia to find and kill witnesses whose testimony could be detrimental. These cops even kidnapped people behind the guise of their police badge and handed the kidnapped victims over to their gangland executioners.

The trial started on March 14, 2006 in the United States District Court Eastern District Of New York in Brooklyn. On the first day of the trial is when the main subject matter of Jimmy's book changed. The main witness for the government was one Burton Kaplan. Kaplan was seventy-two years old; at the age of thirty-nine he served his first prison sentence of four years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. At the start of this trial he still owed eighteen years to the penitentiary for drug charges. He testified "in simple declarative sentences, subject, verb, and object, one following the other to start a rhythm that was compelling to the jury's ear." On that first morning the author listened with excruciating excitement. "A few words from Kaplan on his Brooklyn porch send animals rushing out to kill." What is unveiled by this witness in the pages that follow is a documented history of the murders, beatings, bribes, hijacking, kidnapping and organizational flow chart of the Mafia as never before detailed under oath. Interspersed with detailed transcripts of Kaplan's testimony are almost whimsical "tangential" rhapsodies of Breslin's days gone by. The author leads us into personal "flashbacks" to the Damon Runyon like existence when reporters like him drank at the same bars and sat at the same tables as "famous" underworld characters. Reporters would get chastised if a gangsters name wasn't included in one of his columns. As Kaplan captivated the court room with his testimony, "his face and voice showed no emotion, other than a few instances of irritation when one of the lawyers asked something he knew and they did not. You are wrong, Counselor, he would snap!" "Are you a member of the Mafia?" he was asked. "No I can't be a member, I'm Jewish." "Throughout the trial Kaplan refers to himself by various street names for an informer. He is asked what he means when he says these things. "A STOOL PIGEON IS A RAT. JUST LIKE ME!"

What follows is the inner workings of all the Mafia families from the Lucchese to the Gambino's to the Genovese, Bonanno, et al. The jargon includes "swag", "shylock", "a piece of work" (murder). And of course the nicknames: Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (a brutal killer intimately dissected in this book.), "Good Nicky" Guido, Jimmy "The Clam" Eppolito, "Bad Nicky" Guido, "Fat Tony" Salerno, "Black Pete" Savino, "Benny Eggs" Mangano, "Big Mama" Gallo, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, and endless more. Through it all, Breslin takes the reader from the courtroom, to magical, whimsical, literary, journeys into his and Kaplan's criminally infested past, and back again to the courtroom. Jimmy Breslin is really one of a kind... a fading breed. I could listen to his stories all day long, and so should you!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Return Of The Great Breslin, February 6, 2008

By	Floyd Bannister (New York City) - See all my reviews

Jimmy Breslin is a New York original. I was thrilled to find he had a new book out. I have been reading Breslin for years and this easily ranks alongside his very best. Gritty tales of crime and corruption told in full technicolor as only he can. Take a tour through the underbelly of New York City by a guy who knows it better then anyone. The era of giants like Breslin is sadly fading just like the great city that he chronicles so vividly. Still, it is heartening that we continue to have a witness as strong, trustworthy and hysterical as Jimmy Breslin.

The Good Rat is a great book. Thank you Mr. Breslin for sharing another story.