Vizzini: The Secret Lives of America's Most Successful Undercover Agent [Hardcover]

Sal Vizzini (Author), Oscar Fraley (Author), Marshall Smith (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 330 pages
• Publisher: Arbor House; 1st edition (1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877950504
• ISBN-13: 978-0877950509
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,098,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Undercover Agent, April 16, 2010

By 

Ann Walling "Ann" (Tennessee) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Vizzini: The Secret Lives of America's Most Successful Undercover Agent (Hardcover)

Fascinating book about an agent posing as an Air Force Major and was introduced to Lucky Luciano in Naples. Lucky liked "Mike" and never learned he was being double crossed. Lucky bragged about killing 100 men. I had never heard this before, but was not surprised.

5.0 out of 5 stars From inside flap..., July 9, 2005

By 

Judy Smith "judylynnsbooks" (jamestown, ky United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vizzini: The Secret Lives of America's Most Successful Undercover Agent (Hardcover)

The secret lifes of America's most successful undercover agent.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano (Salvatore Lucania) also knew Sal Vizzini as a "friend," a U.S. Air Force Major called "Michael Anthony Cerra" who for three years conducted an off-and-on palship in Naples with the exiled Mafia capo.

Here, in his own words and for the first time, Vizzini draws on hitherto classified Bureau files to detail the proof of Luciano's inflence from overseas with the syndicate, especially in his beloved New York. It was at Luciano's villa in Rome that "Major Mike Cerra" saw Luciano receive pay off money from Frank Costello; send warnings to such as Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino that their accounts were in arrears (they paid up, plus interest); as judge and jury of a Mafia court condemn or reprieve wayward associates (they called him "the peacemaker").

It was also at Luciano's ville or Naples apartment that Vizzini, during games of gin rummy, heard from The Man his charge that he'd been framed by one-time Governor of New York Tom Dewey, his story of how he helped the U.S. Navy during WWII, how he got the name "Lucky" and why his friends who knew better never used it, and his disclosures about the Mafia, who ran it, and his continuing role in it...indiscretions that led to arrests thousands of miles away.

For 13 years Sal Vizzini was undercover, infiltrating a heroin factory in Palermo, exposing the top-and-underdogs of the heroin traffic in Istanbul, Beirut and Marseilles, blowing up the largest concentration of hard drugs under one roof in a Southeast Asian heroin factory, and finally blowing his cover as a croupier in San Juan while trying to expose the cocaine smuggling that allegedly helped finance Castro's regime.

Sal managed to live to retire, and then to take on the position of Chief of Police, City of South Miami.