Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire [Mass Market Paperback]

Rick Cowan (Author), Douglas Century (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2003

The bestselling true story of a young NYPD detective's life-or-death undercover odyssey that led to the biggest mob takedown in New York City history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1992, New York City detective Cowan was investigating a truck bombing at a Brooklyn garbage transfer station when the "mobbed-up" thugs responsible for the crime showed up to further intimidate Sal Benedetto, the facility's owner. Thinking fast, Benedetto introduced Cowan as his "Cousin Danny," thereby averting disaster-and allowing Cowen entry into a landmark investigation in which he went undercover as Danny Benedetto to expose the Mafia's billion-dollar monopoly of the city waste removal business. By the time the grand jury indictments were handed down, Cowan had spent years on the case, helped put away dozens of mobsters and incurred lasting emotional trauma from the strain of leading a double life. Recalling it here in vivid, riveting detail, Cowan (aided by journalist Century) reconstructs a time when he was deeper undercover in the garbage "cartel" than any city cop had ever been, with the close calls to prove it. Whether he's boosting a wiseguy's car to plant a bug, navigating confrontations with goons wielding two-by-fours and baseball bats or suffering through a Mafia Christmas party with a malfunctioning radio transmitter burning into his leg, Cowan's exploits play on the page like scenes from a well-mounted mob movie. The Hollywood producer with the rights to his story won't have to spend a penny juicing it up: this is a well-told, gripping tale of a heroic investigation.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Forget The Sopranos. If you want down and dirty about the mob, read this. (Tampa Tribune) Takedown's tale gains a velocity unmatched by most fiction. (St. Petersburg Times) A masterful job...spellbinding. (Buffalo News)

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (October 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425192997
• ISBN-13: 978-0425192993
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The very BEST book of its kind in years, November 2, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire (Hardcover)

Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire is by far the best Mob-related book I've read in years. For once we have the perspective of a true good-guy insider, not a bunch of turncoat felons or distant relationss to Mafiosi who heard some stories second and third hand. Detective Cowan's undercover journey was very suspenseful, and this book is definitely a page-turner. Here's an Irish-American cop who did it all, became a believable Italian -American business executive and got up close, wearing wires for YEARS as he met with made guys and capos in the Gambino and Genovese families. Definitely recommended, even if you are not a "Mob buff."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LIVE FROM NEW YORK - THE REAL SOPRANOS, November 14, 2002

By 

Martin V Cusack (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire (Hardcover)

An interesting, suspensful and funny book about how one NY detective, almost unwittingly, found him self the central figure in bringing down the "garbage cartel" in New York. Having been a business owner in Manhattan, who had to pay the unbelievable fees to carters, I hughly recommend this book to anyone looking to get insight into how the "Mob" infiltrated both big and small business.
Kudos to Cowan and Sal Benedetto for following through to the end. Let's hope the politicans have as much back bone as Cowan and Benedetto in insuring that their work was not in vain. A great read. Hope they don't screw up the movie.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kudos to Sal and Danny Bendetto, February 22, 2003

By 

M. Swanson (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire (Hardcover)

A great book. A nice crisp and fast read that will have you turning the pages in anticipation of what comes next. Detective Rick Cowan infiltrated the New York garbage mafia as a problem fixer for an independent garbage hauler. Five years later his investigation resulted in indictments across the board, which have put an end to mafia involvement in the New York garbage industry and has saved New York customers and businesses millions upon millions of dollars.

The book is more than an entertaining read. It provides you a real life glimpse into how the mafia infiltrates and consolidates and industry. Cowan and Century provide background history in the novel that tell the origins of the garbage empire. I don't know of any other book that gives you such a detailed nuts and bolts picture of day to day mob operations - mafia bosses meeting on a daily bases and hatching out deals and shakedowns over Italian pasteries. It is all done by word of mouth and handshakes. As they give orders to their brutal underlings they literally get fat off of the hog.

I doubt that this is the "Fall of the Last Mafia" empire as the book cover says. I'd like to know what other businesses the mafia have "owned" in New York and how they have adjusted to Cowan's Takedown.

After finishing the book I wondered if it was worth it to Detective Cowan - spending five years of his life immersed in an undercover operation that risked his life and disrupted his family life. I think he hints at an answer with his discussion with his father at the end of the book, but there is still some ambiguity. Like a lot of things in life there is probably no yes or no answer.

Buy this book and read it. Like another reviewer said it gives a much better picture of how the mafia operates than the "exposes" written by Mafia goons and second to third generation accounts that pack the "true crime" sections of the book stores.