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A True Story
Ecco
February 2008
On Sale: February 5, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0060856661
EAN: 9780060856663
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Of course Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin recognized
Burton Kaplan right away as the Mafia witness of the ages.
Breslin comes from the same Queens streets as mob bosses
John Gotti and Vito Genovese. But even they couldn't match
Kaplan in crime—and neither could anybody else. In his inimitable New York voice, Breslin, "the city's
steadiest and most accurate chronicler" (Tom Robbins,
Village Voice), gives us a look through the keyhole at the
people and places that define the mafia—characters like
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Gaspipe Casso (named for his
weapon of choice), Thomas "Three-Finger Brown" Lucchese, and
Jimmy "The Clam" Eppolito, interwoven with the good rat
himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, the star witness in the
recent trial of two New York City detectives indicted for
acting as hit men in eight gangland executions. Breslin takes us to the old-time hangouts like Pep
McGuire's, the legendary watering hole where reporters and
gangsters (all hailing from the same working-class
neighborhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories; the
dog-fight circles and body dumps at Ozone Park; and the back
room at Midnight Rose's candy store, where Murder, Inc.,
hired and fired. Most compelling of all, Breslin captures the moments in
which the Mafia was made and broken—Breslin was there the
night John Gotti celebrated his acquittal at his Ravenite
Social Club on Mulberry, having bribed his way to innocence
only to incite the wrath of the FBI, who would later crush
Gotti and others with the full force of the RICO laws. As in his unforgettable novel The Gang That Couldn't Shoot
Straight, Breslin brings together these real-life and
long-forgotten Mafia stories to brilliantly create a
sharp-eyed portrait of the mob as it lived and breathed, as
it sounded and survived.
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