Do You like book The Valachi Papers (aka The Canary That Sang) (2003)?
In it's time, this was an important book on the inner-workings of the mafia. But there are much better books on the topic available today. Peter Maas drug out the beginning with too many details about how he was selected to write the book and the conditions Valachi had in prison. I kept thinking the book would pick up, but once it got going, it was just a lot of name dropping and descriptions of who murdered who. The only reason I was able to finish the book was knowing that one of the "characters" is believed to be a distant relative of my husband.
—Ann Schaffer
This is a fascinating, fabulous and fantastic book, perfect for anybody with an interest in the Cosa Nostra. I found myself so engrossed that I purposefully slowed my reading pace down so I did not devour it all at once. I longed for more even when I'd turned the final page. Really, I found it such a shame that the whole manuscript by Valachi himself was prohibited from publishing, but this really makes up for it. The best parts were definitely the snippets of recounts given from Valachi himself.This book certainly quenched my desires for a good, knowledgeable and thoroughly researched work on the Mafia, which I really have grown to be captivated by in the last few years.A great introduction to the Mafia for anyboy.Hopefully, I will start on my copy of Donnie Brasco soon enough, and find it equally as enthralling.
—Charlotte
Lean, straightforward account of Joseph Valachi's life in the Cosa Nostra. He was the first member to acknowledge publicly the existence of the crime organization and laid out details on how things were run. Maas does a brilliant job of laying everything on the table, providing context, and defining terms that were soon to be commonplace. Valachi's pragmatic approach to his criminal activities makes perfect sense from his point of view. First published in 1968, this is a sturdy building block, part of the essential knowledge required to understand organized crime in the United States.
—Peter Martin