Customer Reviews

The Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino (Berkley True Crime)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a quick read that captures the reader's interest from the start. The book takes the reader through the life and times of Bonnano Gangster Joey Massino, detailing his rise through the Bonnano family, to his ultimate ascension to Boss of the Bonanno Family, which he renames, the Massino Family.

After dropping out of high school, Massino starts his gangster career under the tutelage of former Bonanno Boss Phil Rastelli, working in Rastelli's catering business. Massino quickly rises from soldier to "acting captain", and acquires a Lunch Wagon business that he uses as a front to take numbers bets & tips on scores from customers. Massino uses food businesses throughout his career as "fronts" for illegal, albeit profitable, enterprise.

The book takes the reader through Massino's rise to power, the episode of FBI agent Joseph Pistone(Donnie Brasco), the murder of 3 rival mafia captains in the early 1980's, the Bonnano's being banned from the official Mafia Commision, to the Bonnano's resurgence as one of the most powerful New York Mafia Families in the late 1990's/Early 2000's.

Massino proves time and time again to be very cagey gangster. Massino outsmarts almost every one of his enemies while holding on to a traditional old code of honor for most of his criminal career.

My suggestions for improvements of this book would be that the author include more details of the way mafia schemes work (for the uninitiated), and more day-to-day details of what life is/was really like for a Bonnano Mafioso.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and think that anyone who is interested in true crime would also find it to be an enjoyable read. I give it 5 stars.

This is a great book. Simon Crittle takes us inside the Mafia; into their homes and into their haunts, giving the reader a front seat on what could be the set of the Sopranos. But Joey Massino, the guy the book is about, makes Tony Soprano look like a sissy. Massino is the real live boss of one of New York's Five Families. He's bad and he's brillant. The book take you on a journey from his rough days on the street, through his murderous asent to the top and finally inside the day to day life of a Mob boss in New York today. Crittle avoids all of the familiar mistakes of true crime Mafia books - a zoo of names without defined characters, and a million end-on-end facts that read like a newspaper article - and keeps you on the edge of your seat with this gritty yet beautifully written story.

I just finished this one. Good read and good follow up if you have read 'Donnie Brasco'. This book ties up alot of loose ends (especially w/ the murder of the three Bonnano captains). I rated this one a four because it went into detail in some areas and glossed over some others. I would like to have seen some org chart (like in Roemer's book about the Outfit) with the various caporegimes and soldati. I thought the court excerpts interwoven with the storyline was a bit distracting.

Crime, greed, murder, betrayal, the mafia, a twist at the end...what more could a reader ask for?

Simon Crittle did a great job of individualizing the Bonanno Family members, their role in the family, the orders they gave and carried out and eventually how they betrayed the values of the mob by testifying against Massino.

Don't miss out on this one!

This is a pretty good rundown of the whole Bonanno soap opera. NOt much of this will be new to anyone who has been following the melodrama closely as it has played out over the past five or so years, but casual readers should be enthralled. I was looking for more info about Vincent Basciano, who is only mentioned briefly toward the end. Also, the lack of an index is a big minus; why do so many true crime books lack indexes? Damn, that's annoying.

Ivan Rorick

This is a fast-moving account of the rise and fall of Bonanno Family boss Joseph Massino. Author Simon Crittle presents the details of Massino's crimes, rackets and relationships and explains the power wielded by the man known as the "last godfather."
Crittle does a fair job of generating and maintaining reader excitement with a near-stream of consciousness writing style. That style, however, could be frustrating for readers looking for sequential history. One of the results of the author's oh-by-the-way and let-me-go-back-to tendencies is a book that frankly doesn't merit even the 256 pages it has been given. There is plenty of repetition (readers might get the impression that Massino was guilty of eighty murders rather than eight). Some excerpts of court testimony are provided. But a few of those fail to illustrate the author's points and come across as mere filler material.
For me, the book missed the mark by failing to provide more underworld context. Former Bonanno boss Philip Rastelli, for example, comes across as just another name and isn't given as much attention as the demolition of a couple of gas containers in Maspeth, Queens. While we are told that the Bonanno family is a vast criminal network with affiliate organizations in at least three nations, we are essentially shown just a handful of guys in a couple of old buildings on Long Island.
These omissions are not a problem for readers familiar with the mob, and Crittle's book seems to be intended as the latest installment in a series of journalistic accounts of the New York underworld, building on the still-warm bios of John Gotti.
However, the most frustrating lack of context occurs in the overall theme of the book. From the cover on, Crittle constantly repeats the "last godfather" and "last of the old world gangsters" theme (the mentions call to mind the similarly ridiculous titles of 1981's "The Last Mafioso" and 1988's "The Last Days of the Sicilians"). He doesn't fully explain how Massino was the "last" of anything at all or why we should be interested. Only in the final pages, after acknowledging that Massino already had been replaced by the time the book was written, does he finally come clean: "Time will only tell who'll be the next Last Godfather..."

A briskly written and brief yet very informative history of Joe Massino, former boss of the New York Massino organized crime family. The author does a great job in his description of the operations of the crime family during Massino's leadership and his early career of crime. At the finish Massino decides to sing to the Feds himself to avoid a possible death penalty. I guess he thought that because some many of his former mates in crime ratted on him and spilled the beans, he may as well join them as omerta meant nothing in the finish.

Essentially the mob exists to make as much money as it can as quickly as possible and to keep the money steadily flowing in. The author superbly captures the culture of the Mafia organization and its members and describes clearly the rackets, payoffs, murders etc. This book is great for those true crime buffs that have a clear understanding of the American mafia as the author assumes the reader has a solid understanding of the subject. This a narrowly focused book about the history of Massino and his leadership of his New York mafia family. For a novice l would suggest read Thomas Reppeto's book; American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power or "The Mob, 200 years of Organized Crime in New York' by Virgil Petersen to dig further into this history.

The information the author reveals about the activities of this mafia family is incredible and he obviously has excellent sources and has done his research very effectively, overall an informed, well written and brisk account, a good addition to the many books on organized crime.

A good detailed account of how Joey Massino rose to the top of the Bonnanno Crime family. Pictures are very good as well. This book is a very quick read. I think this account could have benefitted more if the author described the relationships Joey had with the other family heads.

The Sopranos in print! This is a gripping read that offers a rare window into the Mafia's contradictory world of honour and horror. Heaven knows how Crittle got this close to their hellish acts, but I'm glad he did. (nb: though I did read in the 'New York Post' that on the day of the book's launch, the author got a call from one of the Wise Guys he writes of - here's hoping Crittle can avoid one of their infamous bloody 'sit-downs' before he writes his next book)
From the first gruesome murder to the contact he got with Donny Brasco and the real life court case that is on Now, I loved this pacy paperback. (so much so that i called in sick yesterday to finish it!) My only complaint -- there is no note in the book about the author -- I'd like to know who this madman is? Is he 'connected'?? I don't see how anyone could have written this book if he didn't have seriously close ties to the Mafia.

In my own personal opionon this book is excellent. It recounts Joe Massiono's entire crime career, and the crimes of his associates. It recounts several murders and jackings, and the fact that everything in this book is real chills my spine.
The timeline doe's jump around alot, but i personally didn't mind, because it would jump to grab supporting evidence from the future or past in a naerrative storytelling fashion.
All in all this is the only mob book i have ever read so i may be overrating this, but it gives you an abudant amount of information on the crime underworld and for that i gave it 5 stars.