Joseph Bruno's Blog, page 42

“Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit!” – Book Review by Brenda Perlin

Posted on Goodreads by Brenda Perlin

Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit! This was a great entertaining book. A total page turner. This one had me laughing out loud and at times biting my lip out of sheer shock. I have watched the reality show “Mob Wives” so I knew a lot about the characters the author writes about (or at least what they like to show on TV) and I love how the he just says whatever he feels. It’s his honesty and his knowledge that really attracts me to his books. Oh, and his humor too. I had so much fun reading this book!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0091UNCFA

 

“Whitey Bulger – The Biggest Rat” Book Review by Brenda Perlin

Published on Goodreads.

My review for a few titles by Joe Bruno are way over do! My apologies. Whitey Bulger – The Biggest Rat I read while on vacation which was fully enjoyable for me. Joe Bruno’s books are so easy to read that I get lost into the stories completely. I just went right from one to the other. They are all so entertaining, spooky and at times hilarious the way Bruno puts his own comments in whenever he choses. It cracks me up even though at times some of these ‘fellas’ and their crimes send chills up my spine. This book really makes you think about how much of the whole story we do not know. 

In this book we learn what a greedy rat and a brute Whitey Bulger really is. This book, among others are great reads. Whatever this author has to do to keep writing, I say, don’ ever stop. These books are classics!

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZCFVNU

 

 

Joe Bruno’s “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 5 – Girlfriends and Wives” has received another 5-star review

Joe Bruno’s “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 5 – Girlfriends and Wives” has received another 5-star review.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Too much!!, January 28, 2014

By Amazon Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 5 – Girlfriends and Wives (Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps) (Kindle Edition)

Highly entertaining! Very cleverly written. Brings things to life in the imagination. I vividly say yes! Five stars! An excellent read! Thumbs up!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CJWTV5M

Joe Bruno has six of the first nine ranked, and nine of the first 20 ranked books on Amazon.com in the category “Hot New Releases – Organized Crime True Accounts”

Joe Bruno has six of the first nine ranked, and nine of the first 20 ranked books on Amazon.com in the category “Hot New Releases – Organized Crime True Accounts.”

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1 – New York City” is ranked #1. 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/271636011/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr

Mobsters Gang, Crook and Other Creeps – Volumes 1-5

 

Joe Bruno had 5 of the first 7 ranked books on Amazon.com...

Joe Bruno had 5 of the first 7 ranked books on Amazon.com in the category “Hot New Releases – Organized Crime True Accounts.”

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1 – New York City” is ranked highest at #2.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/271636011/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr

 

Mobsters Gang, Crook and Other Creeps – Volumes 1-5

 

Guest book review on “Mob Boss” By Sonny Girard

http://www.sonnysmobsocialclub.com/mobblog.html

MOB BLOG:

After Reading

“MOB BOSS”

I just finished reading “Mob Boss,” the life of Little Al D’Arco, by Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins.  In short, Little Al was a member of the Lucchesi crew who found himself as acting boss when boss of record Vic Amuso and underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso went on the lam to avoid being arrested and tried in the Feds’ multi-mob-family “Windows Case” of the time.  “Mob Boss” follows D’Arco’s life from his growing up in the Navy Yard area of Brooklyn to his sudden rise and equally quick fall to become a government witness.  As I read, I found this book to be very personal.  I had traveled and hung out in many of the locations mentioned and knew quite a number of major and minor characters discussed, some quite well.  One person I’d come across on occasion but didn’t know at all was Al himself.

To me and to someone I knew well in Little Italy, Al D’Arco was singularly unimpressive.  He seemed like an okay guy, but was not someone either of us believed believed would ever become boss, permanent or acting.  My friend, respected in the area, didn’t even know D’Arco was “a friend.”  Not that being a non-imposing figure is necessarily a bad thing, especially for a mob guy.  It just made it surprising when we were brought up to date by our respective crews and told Little Al had been named Acting Boss of the Lucchesi Family.

Early on we see how Al grew up in an area not too far from the one I grew up in by the Navy Yard’s main entrance; in fact, I took a bus to Junior High (they call it Middle School today) closer to his house than mine.  Both places had wiseguys that seemed to have more luxury goods, including beautiful women, than any of the hardworking men who broke their backs at blue collar jobs.  My family was poorer than Al’s and we were constantly reminded by our parents that we didn’t have this or that because we had no money.  Of course, many of us focused on getting money more than anything else, even education.  That’s not an excuse, as my own brother, growing up in the same household, became a lawyer.  Still can’t figure out where he went wrong?

What struck me as I read was that Little Al became involved in mob activities more as a result of happenstance; more of what opportunities crossed his path during his life than what he went out to find and execute (he was so far out of the loop when he wanted to get “made” that he was in the dark about the real reason why the books were closed for so long).  Born leaders like John Gotti or Philly Rastelli or Vito Genovese, who were single-minded in their pursuit of mob activities not only earned large sums of money, but used everything they did to take another step up a rung or two on the mob ladder.  Vices also drive criminal activity as well.  One of the guys on the Donnie Brasco case, my dear departed friend Boobie Cerasani, told me that one Christmas season he’d stolen a couple of trailers of frozen seafood to pay his gambling debts, but by the day of Christmas Eve his bookmaker called and told him he still owed a number of thousands of dollars.  He said he excused himself from the Eve’s seven fish dinner, went out and stole, dumped, and got paid for another trailer, then went home to finish the celebration with his family.  Bottom line is that the unmotivated mobster is usually not boss material, but oftentimes is catapulted into acting boss status to hold a seat for a boss who’s incarcerated but wants to retain his grip on power.  Little Al D’Arco appears to have fallen into that category.

Mob history is replete with stories of imprisoned bosses installing “lobby guys” to hold their places.  The Colombo Family had sanguinary problems when a supposedly loyal and harmless Little Vic Orena was tapped for the acting boss position as the family’s leadership all got century-long prison sentences.  Harmless proved to be malleable and easily influenced, and a present-at-the-time John Gotti helped induce Orena into an internal war with the family’s loyalist forces.

They had had a similar but bloodless problem a number of years earlier when they also placed a lobby guy in charge while waiting for chosen boss Sonny Franzese to hopefully win his appeal of a sentence in a bank robbery case he was widely known to have been framed for.  The lobby, Little Joe Brancato,* wound up letting family associates from the old Gallo crew who were targeted for death over the shooting of Joe Colombo off the hook by officially transferring them to another Family.  Crew members were polled and the decision was made to offer the well liked Brancato two choices: step down and retire or be killed.  Joe chose the former and happily spent many of his last days of retirement at the track, hanging out with some of the boys at a Queens social club, and dining in a couple of his favorite landmark Italian restaurants in his area.

Ironically, it was the same group that took over leadership from Joe Brancato who installed the malleable Orena in the same position years later.

Once I read about Vic Amuso and Gaspipe going on the lam to avoid the Windows trial I found myself saddened at all the things I knew were to come on the following pages of the book.  I knew many of the people who killed and were killed by two men too cowardly to face the music of a trial for manipulating bids for fixing windows on government buildings.  Benny Aloi and others didn’t run and hide.  They stood up, did their time like men, and came home when it was over.  Amuso and Casso on the other hand struck out and murdered loyal men, which, as a result turned others like Pete Chiodo and Al D’Arco against them.  All that blood just to protect themselves from doing a few years behind bars.  It is fitting that the two murderous executives will spend the rest of their lives doing what they were so fearful of at the beginning.

Of course, from my street perspective, I’m bewildered how no one figured out that if they ambushed and killed Amuso and Casso, all the other killing would stop.  I can understand it from Richie Pagliarulo, who was a close friend and partner of mine in the early days, before he wound up with the Lucchesi crew.  Richie was the nephew of Larry Gallo, and spent his life trying to prove he was worthy of his uncle.  Point Richie at a brick wall and he’d butt his head against it till he either got a debilitating concussion or broke down the wall.  He acted more efficiently than he thought.  As a matter of fact, he got his nickname of the Toupe after he’d lost his hair in his twenties as a result of a severe scalp wound he incurred in an auto smash up when I was running from cops one night.  Only his rag doll condition from having consumed too much booze kept him from being killed.

It was sad reading again about Bruno Facciola, who the Amuso and Casso called a stoolpigeon couldn’t be further from the truth.  Bruno had stomach cancer, and the word in the street at the time was that he didn’t have more than six months left.  The idea that he would have spent those last months as a rat is absurd.  His bigger problem at the time seemed to be the blacks he refused to give his brother up to over the murder of a black man in the Foster Avenue Market.  When he died, it was said that blacks rode past his home tossing black power flags from the cars onto his lawn.  He was a good guy and a standup guy.  Amuso and Casso were probably more afraid that Bruno realized that by clipping them the wholesale killing of others would stop.

I smiled when D’Arco describes his conflicts with Frank the Wop, who was one of the more miserable guys around (we said bitticuse).  Bruno tried to settle a problem I had with Frank over a business contract.  The Wop promised to have his man bow out, but didn’t.  Bruno, frustrated, took me to meet him at a card game in Manhattan the night before the contract had to be submitted.  The old bastard flew off the handle, claiming he knew nothing about it, which embarrassed Bruno, who had promised he’d told him.  I took matters into my own hands and got the Wop’s man to bow out the next morning at gunpoint.  Frank the Wop went nuts, but was called on the carpet by executives on my side.  One evening months later, I stopped outside the Sherwood Diner in Canarsie to make a phone call at one of the outside phones (no cell phones at that time).  Frank the Wop was at the counter paying for the meals of him and his friends on the other side of the glass door (maybe stealing cigars too).  When he noticed me, he started yelling inside, with his face reddening and seeming to swell.  I thought at the time he might get a stroke.  I hoped, anyway.

I don’t usually like reading mob pentiti books.  I see through the self-serving, gratuitous bullshit to make the stoolpigeon look bigger and better than he was.  For example, Henry Hill was always viewed as a piece of shit, even by those in his own crew.  Because Paulie Vario seemed blind to the real Hill, it was common to hear it said about Henry, “You respect a dog for its master.”  Didn’t read that in “Wiseguy” or hear it in “Goodfellas.”  In fact, Hill was the dog who bit his master’s hand when he ratted out Paulie for helping him get out of halfway house with a no-show job.  Paulie died in prison for his blind affection for someone many others knew to be a total scumbag.

Yes, I found a couple of minor things that gave me pause in “Mob Boss,” but they were nothing compared to the authenticity of the overall narrative.  I could see how Amuso and Casso, by instituting the kind of purge that hadn’t been carried out since Lepke was on the run, turned guys who might never have thought of ratting out their friends rush to Team America for protection for their and their families’ lives.  Unlike Peter Lance in his book on Greg Scarpa, “Deal with the Devil,” Capeci and Robbins also did a great job in writing in a clear way that brought everything to life for me (I found Lance’s book dry, boring, and like a sleeping pill).  I don’t know if readers who have no background in real mob goings on will appreciate “Mob Boss” as much as I did, but if they’re at all interested in the subject of organized crime, it’s certainly worth their time.

*Noticed while writing this how many lobby guys, thought to be manageable and harmless to the bosses who installed them as temporary position holders had the handle “Little” before their names.  Don’t remember a Little John Gotti, or Little Joe Colombo, or Little Carlo Gambino, or Little Chin Gigante.  Just saying.

© 2013 R.I.C.O. Entertainm ent, Inc – All Rights Reserved

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 1″ is ranked #1 on Amazon/Canada in the category “Gangs,” and #2 in the category “Criminals.”

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 1″ is ranked #1 on Amazon/Canada in the category “Gangs,” and #2 in the category “Criminals.”

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/bestsellers/books/929372/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_4_last

 

Joe Bruno has four of the top five ranked ebooks on Amazon.com in the category “Hot New Releases – Organized Crime True Accounts.”

Joe Bruno has four of the top five ranked ebooks on Amazon.com in the category “Hot New Releases – Organized Crime True Accounts.”

The highest ranked is “Joe Bruno’s Mobsters – Six Volume Set,” which is ranked #2.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/271636011/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr#1

 

The Kindle version of “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 2″ is free today until Wednesday, 1/15, on Amazon.com.

Free ebook Alert!! Come and get it for FREE!!

The Kindle version of “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 2″ is free today until Wednesday, 1/15, on Amazon.com.

To grab your free copy, click on the link below.



http://www.amazon.com/Mobsters-Gangs-Crooks-Creeps-ebook/dp/B006H99D1U/ref=zg_bs_11010_5

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1 – New York City” is free today until Wednesday, January 8.

Free ebook alert!!

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1 – New York City” is free today until Wednesday, January 8. 

“Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps” was the runner up in the 2013 eFestival of Words Best of the Independent Book Awards in the category “General Nonfiction.”

efestivalofwords.com/2013-efestival-o...

To snatch a free copy, click the link below. 

http://www.amazon.com/Mobsters-Gangs-Crooks-Creeps-ebook/dp/B0058J44QO/ref=zg_bs_11010_1