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Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War
Bestselling crime writers Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso reveal the final years of Canada's top mafia boss, Vito Rizzuto, and his bloody war to avenge his family and control the North American drug trade.
Until Vito Rizzuto went to prison in 2006 for his role in a decades-old Brooklyn triple murder, he ruled the Port of Montreal, the northern gateway to the major American drug markets. A master diplomat, he won the respect of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal business thrived on his turf. His family prospered and his empire grew--until one of North America's true Teflon dons finally lost his veneer. As he watched helplessly from his Colorado prison, the murders of his son and father made international headlines; the killings of his lieutenants and friends filled the pages of Canadian news; and the influence of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, spread across Montreal faster than the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In 2012, Vito Rizzuto emerged from prison, a 66-year-old man who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody revenge and damn the consequences. From the events leading to his imprisonment to his shocking death in December 2013, Business or Blood is the final chapter of Vito's story.
From the Hardcover edition.
Until Vito Rizzuto went to prison in 2006 for his role in a decades-old Brooklyn triple murder, he ruled the Port of Montreal, the northern gateway to the major American drug markets. A master diplomat, he won the respect of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal business thrived on his turf. His family prospered and his empire grew--until one of North America's true Teflon dons finally lost his veneer. As he watched helplessly from his Colorado prison, the murders of his son and father made international headlines; the killings of his lieutenants and friends filled the pages of Canadian news; and the influence of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, spread across Montreal faster than the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In 2012, Vito Rizzuto emerged from prison, a 66-year-old man who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody revenge and damn the consequences. From the events leading to his imprisonment to his shocking death in December 2013, Business or Blood is the final chapter of Vito's story.
From the Hardcover edition.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2015
50 people are currently reading
455 people want to read
About the author
Peter Edwards
24 books20 followersPeter Edwards has written for The Toronto Star for almost thirty years, specializing in organized crime and justice issues. He’s the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books, nine of which are on organized crime.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 30, 2019
I became interested in reading this book after watching the Netflix series Bad Blood with Kim Coates. The show was based on this book and as I continued to read I was awed by the charisma and acting ability of Coates and the rest of the stellar cast because they took, arguably, the most boring book I have ever read and created a binge-worthy TV show. At least for me, most books about the mafia are compelling stories that I enjoy reading. Not the case here. The author should be commended. It is extremely hard to write a book about the mafia that reads like a fourth grader plagiarizing Wikipedia and the source news articles, but he accomplished that.
September 25, 2021
If you read The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto or Mafia Inc.: The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan. Your probably gonna want to read this book. Business or Blood finishes the story of where the other two books left off. These three books make a nice three-part historical trilogy on the Montreal Mafia.
June 17, 2019
The first chapters depict the fascinating organized crime world. Unfortunately, the book's chapters are not well tied together in a complete story that unfolds as you read the book. The chapters end up being a rinse and repeat of basically the previous chapters. Same, same, but with different actors of organized crime.
July 9, 2018
The tv series is much better than the book.
September 11, 2023
Mafia Inc.: The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan, which I finished a few weeks ago, ended its intrigue with a single deadly bullet to the jaw of Nicòlo Rizzuto, the father of the Rizzuto family in 2010, while Vito, his son and the main man behind the Montreal mafia, served time in the United States for his role in the Three Capos murder in New York in 1981. While there is some inevitable overlap with Mafia Inc., Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War picks up the story when Vito begins his prison term in the United States. Opening the book with the death of Vito's son Nick Jr., Edwards tells the story of the power vacuum that developed in the Montreal milieu in Vito's absence, right up to Vito's own death in a Montreal hospital, supposedly of pneumonia.
For me, one of the most interesting components of the Italian organized crime world is the interplay between the different Italian mafia-type groups, particularly the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. In the Canadian underworld, Montreal is generally considered to be Sicilian territory, while Ontario is considered to be Calabrian territory. You can imagine how, with The Sicilian Boss, supposed Godfather of The Sixth Family, stuck inside a maximum security penitentiary in Colorado, the 'Ndrangheta, based in the Toronto suburbs of Vaughan and Woodbridge, might have designs on Montreal. With its position at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and the perceived leniency of the Canadian judicial system, Montreal had long been the conduit for South American cocaine and heroin, imported wholesale to North America. There it was divvied between the mafia and the biker gangs for distribution across North America, including the eastern seaboard megopolis that runs from Boston, MA to Washington, DC. Thus, the whole of the eastern North American drug trade was facilitated by the Sicilian Rizzuto clan; over in Europe, however, the Calabrians are considered to be the most significant players in the drug trade. Rizzuto, helpless to do anything - he had to be talked out of asking the Americans to let him attend his son's funeral back in Canada - can only look on as major players in the Toronto 'Ndrangheta clans compete amongst themselves and other Montreal underworld figures, for supremacy of the streets.
Interestingly, Business or Blood dealt far more with the Montreal mob's connections to the notoriously corrupt Quebec construction industry than did Mafia, Inc. In addition to detailing its infiltration of Quebec's primary construction labour union, it covered the years of the Charbonneau Commission, from which Vito Rizzuto escaped testifying likely only due to death.
The only reason I'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars is that it felt, at times, like I was reading a list of mob hits. While I'm fully aware that mob hits can be notoriously difficult to solve, I sometimes wondered if Edwards could have provided more of a story, letting us know, in more than a few words, why that particular murder mattered to the system. Maybe it was actually the case, but the endless hit parade occasionally left me feeling like people were dying just for the sake of dying.
For me, one of the most interesting components of the Italian organized crime world is the interplay between the different Italian mafia-type groups, particularly the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. In the Canadian underworld, Montreal is generally considered to be Sicilian territory, while Ontario is considered to be Calabrian territory. You can imagine how, with The Sicilian Boss, supposed Godfather of The Sixth Family, stuck inside a maximum security penitentiary in Colorado, the 'Ndrangheta, based in the Toronto suburbs of Vaughan and Woodbridge, might have designs on Montreal. With its position at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and the perceived leniency of the Canadian judicial system, Montreal had long been the conduit for South American cocaine and heroin, imported wholesale to North America. There it was divvied between the mafia and the biker gangs for distribution across North America, including the eastern seaboard megopolis that runs from Boston, MA to Washington, DC. Thus, the whole of the eastern North American drug trade was facilitated by the Sicilian Rizzuto clan; over in Europe, however, the Calabrians are considered to be the most significant players in the drug trade. Rizzuto, helpless to do anything - he had to be talked out of asking the Americans to let him attend his son's funeral back in Canada - can only look on as major players in the Toronto 'Ndrangheta clans compete amongst themselves and other Montreal underworld figures, for supremacy of the streets.
Interestingly, Business or Blood dealt far more with the Montreal mob's connections to the notoriously corrupt Quebec construction industry than did Mafia, Inc. In addition to detailing its infiltration of Quebec's primary construction labour union, it covered the years of the Charbonneau Commission, from which Vito Rizzuto escaped testifying likely only due to death.
The only reason I'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars is that it felt, at times, like I was reading a list of mob hits. While I'm fully aware that mob hits can be notoriously difficult to solve, I sometimes wondered if Edwards could have provided more of a story, letting us know, in more than a few words, why that particular murder mattered to the system. Maybe it was actually the case, but the endless hit parade occasionally left me feeling like people were dying just for the sake of dying.
July 23, 2019
And here I thought Canadians were the good guys! Turns out, their mafia is as bad as ours in the U.S. This book follows the "career" of Vito Rizzuto, a mob boss in Montreal. It has hit men, drug traffickers, gang members, high-rollers, corrupt officials and lots of violent deaths. No wonder it was made into a TV series! The writing is OK, but each chapter reads more like a newspaper story, and the plot linking them is pretty repetitive: Just you wait until Vito gets out; you're gonna get it! My favorite line was "Friends became rich, and enemies became corpses." That's it in a nutshell.
October 5, 2019
I had watched an enjoyed the TV series that this was based on so got the book. The TV series is much better which is something I don't normally say. The book hops all over the place and doesn't really keep a consistent timeline as it constantly goes back to pre Vito in jail days and then hops forward again. Very hard to follow the timeline and the story of the war against his family now that he is in jail.
March 9, 2024
A telling story of the Italian mafia in Canada, their complicated network and rivalries and the billions of dollars that flow through Canada from their exploits. The focus is on Vito Rizutto, king of the Montreal mafia until his death in 2013 at the age of 67. In telling his story, the authors Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso weave through the host of characters of the Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal and New York mafia who are all interconnected in one way or another. The many characters with their sometimes cheesy mafia nicknames make it difficult to tell, at times, which character is which but the story is compelling and rather scary. These families interact with politicians and significant business personalities and Canada is their haven. Montreal always had a reputation for being corrupt but did we know that it had a reputation of being the third most corrupt city in the world, Port Said beng number one? Antonio Nicaso is a journalist and now an academic in Canada who has covered the Italian mafia for many years, at significant risk to his own life. Sometimes the mafia is glamorized, as in the popular TV series the Sopranos, but it is a violent, deeply cynical crime organization which exploits vulnerabilities. Assassinations abound this society which passes under the public radar unless a spectacular murder calls public attention to it.
July 6, 2019
I decided to read this book because of the series BAD BLOOD on Netflix, based on this book, wanting to learn more about organized crime and the 'players' -- I did do that and some -- as there are so many people, it was hard to keep track of who was who -- and that is the frightening thing: there are SO MANY people involved. BAD BLOOD did a fine job -- kudos to the screenplay writers and the actors. I finished the tv and the book thinking: why do people get involved in organized crime? (Power, family, money, adrenalin rush, etc.) The likelihood of death is extemely high -- and not by natural causes. And what of those who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, in the middle of the 'war' between the factions? Organized crime is a nasty business.
March 30, 2020
In what is almost a true-life version of Godfather, Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso’s [Business or Blood] chronicles the rise and fall of Vito Rizzuto and the violent wars he waged for control of the drug trade in Canada, as well as the United States. The levels of corruption in Montreal are striking, almost reminiscent of Richard Daley’s Chicago.
Although it is intriguing to contrast this book with the Netflix series Bad Blood, which is based on this book, the more interesting part is a window into the history of organized crime in Canada, especially for those of us in the United States who may not have realized that the mafia exists in Canada--not just in the United States.
Although it is intriguing to contrast this book with the Netflix series Bad Blood, which is based on this book, the more interesting part is a window into the history of organized crime in Canada, especially for those of us in the United States who may not have realized that the mafia exists in Canada--not just in the United States.
February 23, 2022
I start reading this book because I watched the tv show, even so I enjoyed it, I think the book is written in a documentary way, nothing against it just not as successfully entertaining as the tv show.
May 23, 2025
Edwards tells a captivating tale of the Montreal mob's fall, but he sometimes gets too into the weeds with names and details which makes it harder to read than it needed to be. That said, it was entertaining and interesting.
December 14, 2018
It was interesting to learn more about the subject matter, particularly in connection to cities where I have lived and visited but I found the writing too simple.
January 10, 2019
Very detailed, very interesting, and very well-researched.
June 24, 2015
Open the non-fiction novel “Business or Blood” by the accomplished authors Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso to any page and you will be met not only with intelligent, entertaining, and accurate style, but you will also find the intriguing true story of what the authors call “Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War”.
Though this novel focuses on Vito Rizzuto, one of history’s most influential and powerful Canadian Mafia bosses, the story is transcontinental and international, as Rizzuto’s influence in illegitimate and illegal pastimes cross Canadian borders and into the world at large.
In addition to excellent and engaging prose, “Business or Blood” offers readers a chronology that spans 186 years, the timeline providing more than a glance at the life of a single man as it delves into the history of the gang in 1828 and culminates in the death of gang leader Ducarme Joseph in 2014.
Along with the chronology, Edwards and Nicaso include a map of Rizzuto’s turf and an index for the inquisitive researcher. These additions, along with the excellent organization of the novel, create an atmosphere of intrigue making “Business or Blood” impossible to put down.
Successful crime writers, Edwards and Nicaso have teamed up to produce a powerful, bone-chilling account of the North American crime world and Vito Rizzuto’s participation in it. Unlike many nonfiction works that are dry and more of a junkyard for facts, “Business or Blood” reads like a mystery novel with the punch of true crime.
Reviewer: M.K. Sealy earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in literature from a Nashville university. She is a copyeditor for a Nashville-based publication, but also writes poetry, fiction, and is currently attempting a screenplay, all while working to obtain a Master of Education.
Killer Nashville's Review of Business or Blood: Vito Rizzuto's Fight for Revenge and Control of the North American Drug Trade
Killer Nashville's Past Book Reviews
Though this novel focuses on Vito Rizzuto, one of history’s most influential and powerful Canadian Mafia bosses, the story is transcontinental and international, as Rizzuto’s influence in illegitimate and illegal pastimes cross Canadian borders and into the world at large.
In addition to excellent and engaging prose, “Business or Blood” offers readers a chronology that spans 186 years, the timeline providing more than a glance at the life of a single man as it delves into the history of the gang in 1828 and culminates in the death of gang leader Ducarme Joseph in 2014.
Along with the chronology, Edwards and Nicaso include a map of Rizzuto’s turf and an index for the inquisitive researcher. These additions, along with the excellent organization of the novel, create an atmosphere of intrigue making “Business or Blood” impossible to put down.
Successful crime writers, Edwards and Nicaso have teamed up to produce a powerful, bone-chilling account of the North American crime world and Vito Rizzuto’s participation in it. Unlike many nonfiction works that are dry and more of a junkyard for facts, “Business or Blood” reads like a mystery novel with the punch of true crime.
Reviewer: M.K. Sealy earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in literature from a Nashville university. She is a copyeditor for a Nashville-based publication, but also writes poetry, fiction, and is currently attempting a screenplay, all while working to obtain a Master of Education.
Killer Nashville's Review of Business or Blood: Vito Rizzuto's Fight for Revenge and Control of the North American Drug Trade
Killer Nashville's Past Book Reviews
December 8, 2019
worth 18$, even if a used book, le milieu laws are well-written on out-of-print gem will only rise in valuation.
that, the writers include map is great to let readership visualize and, the photographs add.
the Spaniard chapters were personal favourite.
journos wrote a well book on the import of interrelationships power dynamics.
o, there mightn't've been cocaine or, not.
that, the writers include map is great to let readership visualize and, the photographs add.
the Spaniard chapters were personal favourite.
journos wrote a well book on the import of interrelationships power dynamics.
o, there mightn't've been cocaine or, not.
March 20, 2015
I enjoyed this fact finding novel that laid out the history of the Rizzuto crime family. It was well researched and gave you an insight into the workings of the mafia and just how much power they had in eastern Canada and in particular how they infiltrated local government in Montreal.
Having lived in Montreal I was familiar where these events took place but found the many characters and the Italian names confusing at times.
December 29, 2018
An explosive and dynamic book which reads like a thriller while still maintaining the lucidity of a well researched and documented piece of Canadian crime History! Having lived and gone to school in Montreal in the mid to late '80s this is a bit of the recent past which I relate to. Peter & Antonio wrote a riveting and comprehensive book, which I would recommend for lovers of crime History. And the spinoff TV series with Kim Coates has also been well worth watching.
August 27, 2015
Check out my review here: http://www.newstalk1010.com/blog/just...
July 5, 2020
I watched the series before I read the book,loved them both. The cast of characters in the book and the series were amazing. I will read this book more than once.
April 8, 2017
If you read The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto or Mafia Inc.: The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan. Your probably gonna want to read this book. Business or Blood finishes the story of where the other two books left off. These three books make a nice three-part historical trilogy on the Montreal Mafia.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews