The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr. (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

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Although this sprawling, well-referenced Mob bio is nominally about Santo Trafficante Jr., Deitche necessarily starts with Santo Sr., who flew under law enforcement's radar and took advantage of his early rivals' bloody squabbling to create the organized crime empire he eventually handed over to his namesake. Both Trafficantes so adeptly dodged publicity that Deitche was hard-pressed to find significant documentation of Sr.'s activities before his 1930s emergence as the Tampa, Florida, Mafia boss. At the time when Luciano, Lansky, and Capone moved away from ethnic divisions within gangs, the Trafficante crew remained Sicilian-dominated. Maintaining close ties to New York's Five Families and Chicago's Outfit, Santo Jr.'s organization participated in most major Mob high jinks of the latter twentieth century, including leadership roles in such alleged CIA-Mob partnerships as the Bay of Pigs invasion and assassination plots involving Castro and JFK. Deitche presents the sprawling Trafficante story in luscious detail and appends a bulging bibliography of related material. This excellent gangster study handily fills a big gap in Mob literature. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr. exposes the life and ruthless times of one of America's most powerful and feared mob bosses. With a criminal empire that stretched from the Gulf Coast throughout the Caribbean, Trafficante was linked to drug trafficking, plots to kill Fidel Castro, and the assissination of JFK. Scott M. Deitche scoured court records, law-enforcement reports, newspaper accounts, and counted dozens of interviews to find the complete-and compelling-story of this enigmatic Mafioso don.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569803226
• ISBN-13: 978-1569803226
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #600,478 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Significant Work on the Tampa Mafia, July 25, 2007

By	Rick Warner (California, USA) - See all my reviews

For those who don't know, Santo Trafficante, Jr., was the Mob boss of the Tampa, Florida area from at least the late 50s to his death in the 1980s, and he may have had some sort of connection with JFK's assassination. Scott Deitche does a marvelous job of giving us his background and details about his life, as well as other incidents in the Tampa crime family during his reign.

Deitche's second book is very impressive. He has shown tremendous growth and uses a wealth of primary sources, including oral interviews of living relatives of deceased mobsters. For the researcher, the endnotes are greatly appreciated. As far as writing style, it's almost academic compared to the informal style of his first book. So if you want to know what went on in the field of Florida organized crime in the second half of the twentieth century, this is the book for you. If you are just interested in true crime, this is also for you. And for those interested in Tampa or Florida history, I think you will enjoy it too.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Real Crime, South Florida style., December 28, 2007

By	Mcgivern Owen L (NY, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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"The Silent Don" is the story of Santo Trafficante, longtime Mafia boss of South Florida. SD provides an endless parade of mafiadom, crime personalities and corrupt officials. Author Deitche has certainly done his homework. Like a good reporter, the author buttresses his text with piles of references and footnotes, almost to the point of overkill. SD touches many the many bases of Trafficante's line of work, but two chapters stand out: 1) Chapter 6 deals with the "good old days" in Havana before Fidel Castro overthrew the place, closed the casinos and kicked the mob out. What a fun, free wheeling, anything goes place Havana must have been-and how profitable for the bosses like ST. One wishes this fascinating sector had been longer. 2) Chapter 15 takes us to, if not down, the slippery slope of the JFK assassination and the Mob's involvement with that treacherous act. Did Trafficante REALLY confess his role in the JFK murder to his lawyer? Deitche suggests so. Or, as the author also hints, was Carlos Marcello, Mafia boss of New Orleans, behind the JFK hit? Marcello controlled Dallas in those days. Perhaps it was that eponymous bunch of "rogue" CIA agents harboring grudges from the Bay of Pigs fiasco? Again, one wishes for more concrete evidence, however fascinating the speculation. The final call on SD makes a 5 star rating impossible. Deitche would have served his readers better had he narrowed the scope of the text rather than covering so many of ST's criminal activities. Also, the typesetting is wearying: Paragraphs need to be better spaced. Physical layout is a problem here and the footnoting is awkward. Do we need 536 of them in a 229 page book? A good stern editor with a sharp blue pencil could have tidied up the text, but those guys were laid off years ago! That kvetching aside, SD remains an entertaining 4 star story. This is only a first edition; perhaps future printings can address the housekeeping issues. That might nudge "Silent Don" up into the 5 star category.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not compelling, but . . ., August 22, 2007

By	Girard Bowe (Richmond VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

certainly worth reading if you like digging a bit deeper into the Mafia literature. Trafficante usually figures as a minor character in other books, so I was glad to learn more about him. I wouldn't call this a great read, though. There are a number of references to "Mob Lawyer," Selwynn Raab's biography of Ragano, Trafficante's lawyer. Haven't read that yet, but have read Raab's "Five Families," which I can highly recommend as being very well-written & informative. Most bothersome to me about "Silent Don" was the index - the page references were off on every single entry - and I checked dozens. There was some regularity to the discrepancy, but it was a real pain to work around.