The Good Rat: A True Story [Paperback]

Jimmy Breslin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

In his inimitable New York voice, Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the Mafia—characters like John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (named for his weapon of choice), and Jimmy "the Clam" Eppolito—interwoven with the remarkable true-crime saga of the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the star witness in the recent trial of two NYPD detectives indicted for carrying out eight gangland executions. Through these unforgettable real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories, Jimmy Breslin captures the moments in which the mob was made and broken.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Throaty New York dialogue is wonderfully realized by Richard M. Davidson, who leads the way for a small cast of narrators who assume various roles in this powerful Mafia tale. Davidson is so firm and solid in his delivery, he actually becomes the hard-nosed characters in question: Sammy The Bull Gravano and Gaspipe Casso. Kaipo Schwab offers a fantastic supporting performance as U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch, while Richard Mover takes on the role of turncoat mob associate Burton Kaplan. Each character is so well developed and believable that listeners will suspect they're listening to actual recordings rather than outstanding performances. Breslin's words are perfectly suited to these fine readers, who make them their own in three stunning performances.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060856696
• ISBN-13: 978-0060856694
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,015,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 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
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Rat: A True Story (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 17 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 "*SHAQ*" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Good Rat: A True Story (Hardcover)

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!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A national treasure, February 14, 2008

By 

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

This review is from: The Good Rat: A True Story (Hardcover)

Long before "The Sopranos," Casino and Goodfellas, Jimmy Breslin wrote a book in 1970 called THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT that was also made into a movie. It was one of the first fictional looks inside the feared Cosa Nostra, written a year after Mario Puzo penned THE GODFATHER. There might never have been a fictional Tony Soprano if not for Breslin and Puzo.

Breslin knew his subject. He spent many a long night back in the day drinking in mob joints with characters such as Jimmy Burke, who was portrayed in Goodfellas by Robert De Niro. Breslin points out here that a young De Niro consulted with him to find out how to play wiseguys before filming The Gang. It was one of Bobby D's first screen roles before Godfather: Part II.

So who better to cover what was billed as the first great mob trial of the 21st century? Two NYPD detectives were accused of being hitmen for the Lucchese crime family, fulfilling contracts on eight victims. Breslin approaches the trial with a sense of gloom. "And the idea of cops who use their badges to murder depresses me," he writes, "It is dreary and charmless and lacks finesse. It promises no opportunity to marvel, much less laugh."

And then Burton Kaplan, the good rat in this tale, takes the stand to inform on the cops. Breslin observes, "He testifies in simple declarative sentences, subject, verb and object, one following the other to start a rhythm that is compelling to the jury's ear...Kaplan comes out of all the ages of crime, out of Dostoyevsky, of the Moors Murders, of Murder Inc. A few words spoken by Burt Kaplan on his Brooklyn porch sent animals rushing out to kill."

Breslin found his book, as Kaplan tells the court about his life in crime. He uses Kaplan's story to link us to the history of the mob over the past half century, as witnessed firsthand by reporter Breslin.

Kaplan is not a mob boss. He is not even a "made man." As a Jew, he can't be a member of the Sicilian mob. Kaplan is a legitimate businessman with a lot of illegitimate sidelines. Whether dealing in drugs or stolen goods, Kaplan is an "earner" for the mob. He also becomes right-hand man to Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, a Lucchese crime boss who uses Kaplan as the go-between to the alleged "killer" cops.

At 72 and facing 18 more years in prison on drug charges, Kaplan quite reluctantly and with great sorrow breaks the code of silence he has lived his life by in order to see his grandchild as a free man. He becomes a rat.

THE GOOD RAT is a classic mob book. It is a fascinating and compelling read made even better by one of America's greatest writers working his craft at the top of his game. Breslin does not just write sentences --- he chisels them as if working in stone. Most writers just get the words down, but Breslin works the words until they are sharp and precise and paint clear pictures. This has become a lost art in corporate journalism today and especially on the Internet.

Consider Breslin's description of one of the cops: "He must weigh more than three hundred pounds. He has the shoulders of a goat. Once he stopped bodybuilding, his front slid down like a slab off a collapsing glacier." Or this description of his fellow defendant: "His narrow, sharp face reveals less than a frosted window."

Interspaced between the trial, Breslin gives us the entire modern history of the mob. At the beginning, the "Black Hand" operated in secret as J. Edgar Hoover denied its existence. By the late '60s the Mafia had become part of American folklore as bestselling writers like Breslin and Puzo started making it a cultural phenomenon.

Then the narrative shifts to the Outfit's waning years at the end of the 20th century as arrogant gangsters like John Gotti were destroyed by informants like Sammy "The Bull" Gravano and RICO statures started putting old men away not for five years, as had been the case, but for 50 years of hard time. The code of Omerta quickly crumbled.

Breslin writes with his usual passion and biting humor. As a young newspaperman he got the mob beat because he came from Queens. "I was reputed to be streetwise and tough," he writes. "Which was untrue. I didn't fight. I chased stories, not beatings. But I knew where to find people who were somewhat less than our civic best, and so the editors clung to the illusion."

Did he ever fear that his writing about the mob would get him buried in The Hole, the notorious "informal" burial site in Ozone Park? He writes, "Was I nervous about the mobsters? You want to be afraid of something, be afraid of being broke."

Written as only JB can. Like the legendary reporter he is, Breslin tells the truth about the mob. "As it dissolves, you inspect it for what it actually was, grammar-school dropouts who kill each other and purport to live by codes from the hills of Sicily that are actually either unintelligible or ignored."

In THE GOOD RAT, Breslin shows us unexpected sides of the mob. Jimmy Burke "left a mountain of bodies" buried over his career. One night, Burke summons Breslin to an ominous midnight meet. Breslin wonders if he is going to be killed. But he has other problems on his mind; his first wife is dying of cancer. Burke surprises him by offering him $30,000 in cash to get his wife the best doctors. It isn't a bribe, Burke points out, because "I know Rose when you married her." Breslin declines, saying, "But I got to remember you forever."

Times change. Traditional mob enterprises like gambling and loan sharking have been taken over by the government and banks. The corner ATM machine in poor neighborhoods replaces the shylock while still charging outrageous interest on "loans." Yet there will always be a Mafia, Breslin points out. "Just like Prohibition, mobsters will do things nobody else wants to do," he writes.

At one point in this book Breslin describes the late newspaperman from Chicago, Mike Royko, as "a national treasure." Very true. But so is Jimmy Breslin. Another great writer, Pete Hamill, once told me that "Jimmy is Jimmy." Other writers have copied his style for decades, but nobody has his distinctive voice. THE GOOD RAT is one of his best books. Read and enjoy it. A new work by Breslin is an event to celebrate and cherish.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan